


Synodic Shifts

by RemusJLupin



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Dumbledore is misguided, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, Eventual Wolfstar - Freeform, Fenrir Greyback is a dick, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Cannibalism, Implied/Referenced Abuse, M/M, Marauders, Marauders' Era, POV Lily Evans Potter, POV Remus Lupin, POV Sirius Black, Remus Lupin Needs a Hug, Slow Build, Slow Burn, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-16
Updated: 2018-12-29
Packaged: 2019-03-05 18:21:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 15
Words: 166,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13393575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RemusJLupin/pseuds/RemusJLupin
Summary: Remus Lupin never made it to Hogwarts. Taken by Fenrir Greyback soon after he is bitten, he was raised among other werewolves and saw the rougher side of life. When a Death Eater arrives to guide the werewolves in their aggression, he starts to resist things he has hated for years.Sirius Black was knee-deep fighting for a cause he didn't even know the half of when he volunteered to disguise as a Death Eater in an effort to gain support of the werewolves. Having never met one, his expectations of them aren't high - they're brutal monsters. Or so he believes, until he meets a certain person who is straying from Greyback's side.It's a long ride, but at least they have each other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The idea for this fic came from a discussion and creation of an RP with another person, which I have fleshed out and written myself. So thanks to JD for some of the ideas!
> 
> My intention is to make something long of this if I have the time! However, I have a tendency to drag things out so am trying to keep the plot moving forward.
> 
> Any questions/suggestions/feedback/comments are extremely welcome :) I've written fics before and I've been writing roleplays for six years now, but I've not posted any fics online for quite a while, so I'm a little rusty.

If Sirius Black had thought joining the Order of the Phoenix would be safe or easy, he had been sorely mistaken. Even if he skirted missions, membership of the society alone carried risks of interrogation, torture and death.

Perhaps it was _why_ he joined, so driven by the cause that he was ready to go to any length of recklessness in the name of justice, yet also to distract himself from everything else for a short while.

At least, that was how Albus Dumbledore had theorised it when Sirius Black volunteered for a mission which could easily leave him for dead.

At first, the old man had not closed the request for volunteers; spurred on by the persistent concerns of James Potter, he had sought an older and less volatile volunteer. Yet those stable Order members with their careers and families were hardly eager to put themselves on the front line.

As Minerva had unwillingly put it, Sirius _did_ have some traits which would be exceedingly useful to the job, traits which might just keep him in one piece for the next few months. His quick wit, his intelligence and – much to his own dismay – the family name.

Pacing his office in wait of the man, Dumbledore could only hope it would be enough. James Potter had made him, in something a little stronger than jesting despair, promise that his best friend would make it back alive. Sadly, some promises could not be made that easily.

And promises which involved sending Sirius Black disguised as a Death Eater into the heart of a werewolf camp were most certainly not going to be safe.

* * *

 

“I have news. Excellent news.”

Fenrir Greyback was the only man standing in the forest clearing. Men, women and children had taken up positions on the floor, a disorganised kind of gathering. Yet the hierarchy was clear – a smaller group of men lurked behind Greyback, scanning the area for signs of disruption.

Greyback remained unconcerned, leering down at the people in excitement, expression only distinguishable from anger by his primitive attempt at a grin. Even this was enough to silence the restless children squirming at his feet.

“As you will remember, some time ago, the Dark Lord communicated with me about the possibility of an alliance.” His tongue rolled over the final word slowly, testing as though he had never spoken it before. It seemed to work, though – he was staring down at the others as though they were his subjects and he a king about to declare war. “An alliance which will allow us our _rights._ Our _freedom_ and our _blood!”_

“Justice!”

A man in the crowd had called out a cry of support, raising himself just enough that Remus could see him in the crowd. He had the look of someone delighted by those words, eager to serve. Perhaps, the man found himself thinking, perhaps _he_ should be up here instead, with the chosen, loyal few.

“Precisely,” Greyback smirked, reaching a long, claw-like fingernail to his teeth and picking at scraps of flesh. “And now we have received word from him. Tomorrow night, the Dark Lord will send one of his men. A _Death Eater._ He will guide and instruct us in his word. We will carry out tasks for him in return for what the world has denied us for centuries…”

The man Remus had been watching cheered this time, yet several around him muttered, and understandably so.

_“Silence!”_

Greyback’s voice echoed through the clearing of trees, reverberating around the huddle of people until silence fell upon them. Two men much larger than Remus stood on either side of him now, ready to reach out for the next person to raise their voice.

“I suppose none of you _oppose_ this plan?”

Eyes shining with malice, his gaze flickered to Remus for a fraction of a second, before resting on the crowd again. The sitting man kept his mouth clamped shut – resisting right now would have caused more trouble than his life’s worth.

“Are you suggesting you _don’t_ want the freedom we’ve been denied for centuries? You _want_ to starve?!”

He was met with silence, but only for a second.

“How is a dirty human wizard ever going to tell _us_ how to operate?” A woman shouted, rising in the crowd. Her grey hair was matted and clothes tatty, but there was a fire in her eyes which hadn’t died. “Tell them to get bitten! We don’t listen to _their_ instructions.”

Her derisive jeers were earning more cheers than even Greyback; relief washed over Remus and he managed a kind of secret, smug smile in her direction. But their leader had apparently been planning for this, his smile waxy, words rehearsed.

“Ah. But we shall be doing it on our own terms, for our own gains. This Death Eater is nothing more than a figurehead for a greater cause. Let the humans _think_ we see them as equals. When the time is right, they’ll see the truth…” He laughed harshly, spiked teeth bared. It was hardly surprising to see one of the children at his feet recoil slightly.

“You are not to speak to this Death Eater!” He continued, satisfied with the increased focus from his crowd now. “These dealings shall be left to myself and my men. When time is right, the honoured among you may be selected to help with his mission. For now, I do not know. But remember,” he smiled, drawing a wand from his pocket and learning down to the boy who had just crawled away from him, “remember what I am capable of if you think you can challenge me. That means _all_ of you. Now, go.”

They didn’t need to be told twice.

At his words, the crowd scattered, hurrying back into the shadows and caves of the forest clearing until silence fell once again. As ever, Greyback had acted skilfully – delicate yet forceful, ready to challenge anyone who might threaten him.

Perhaps this was why he turned to Remus so suddenly.

“I assume your heard me, Lupin?”

Greyback had seized him by the arm and dragged him to one side, away from the other men and close enough that Remus could smell the blood of his breakfast on his teeth.

“I practically wrote that speech, of course I heard it,” he reassured him, teeth gritted and eyes refusing to meet his. Greyback’s concerns about opposition hadn’t stemmed from nothing, after all.

“You did not, if you remember, write about your loyalty to me. In fact, I seem to remember you acting to the contrary…”

His mouth was so close he could feel warm breath on his neck, hairs standing on end more with each word. Remus knew to keep his mouth shut, lest anything worse happen.

“Need I remind you, Lupin, of how you told me you disapproved of this idea? Of how you thought it was a plot to exploit our kinds for a cause which didn’t care for us?”

Mouth still tightly shut, he ducked his head.

“And need I remind you…” Greyback stuck out a finger, rough nail tracing one of the fresher scars on Remus’s shoulder, “of what happened the last time you tried a little resistance plot on me? When you thought you knew better than my plans?”

“No.”

Eyes now closed, he missed Greyback’s expression as the man tilted his chin up with a bloody finger, his smile twisted.

“Good, Remus. Good things will come if you remain that way. The alternative,” he smirked, “will suit your interests much less well.”

Behind him, he could hear the snickers of the other men in Greyback’s chosen group. Older, bigger men who had been so kind as to teach Remus the consequences of back-chatting his superiors. Focused on his breathing, on the way his nails dug into the palms of his hands, he took a moment to steady himself before following them into the cave.

In all honesty, Remus was unsure what the Death Eater was going to expect of a werewolf camp. Yet if his suspicions were correct, this man would be a pureblooded, high-status man who would be in for a horrible shock.

It was with a sense of grim satisfaction that he looked around the cave, blinking through the groom and trying to imagine it through the eyes of someone who was used to mahogany furniture and house elves in every corner.

Besides, Remus was one of the _lucky_ ones. Greyback’s closest men were granted the privilege of sleeping inside the cave, finding patches of the ground on which to rest. Only the leader himself had a bed – a tatty, crudely constructed hammock which nobody else was allowed to touch. But the cave floor was surely better than outside, where most people found themselves having to sleep.

Would Greyback give up his hammock for a man used to silk sheets? He snorted a little at the image of a conflict, adjusting his legs to avoid the bodies of sleeping men within the cave.

And surely, the human who had been raised on a diet of caviar and stuffed pheasants would _love_ and _adore_ the way in which the werewolves at their meals. He only hoped he could see the look on this man’s face as they brought in the next night’s animal carcass.

Humans might have thought they were good for a lot, but for some things, they were simply and utterly useless.

Beside him, someone rolled over and gave a loud snore, a noise which might have been unsettling to someone unused to sleeping in a room with eight others. By now, though, Remus wasn’t convinced he would be able to sleep _without_ it. Besides, the presence of others kept the cave a little warmer.

Careful not to roll onto the huge, hairy man, he rested his head on one arm as a pillow and closed his eyes.

He fell asleep to the image of a Death Eater trying to work out how the werewolves washed and falling into the nearby stream.

Even if Greyback was going to force him into some ridiculous plan against his will, couldn’t he at least make a little fun for himself from it?

* * *

 

The north of England was always chilly in autumn at best, but Sirius Black could have sworn someone had put a freezing charm on this forest. As though aware of what lived in the heart of it, life seemed to shy away – even the trees seemed a little too still.

Only now did Sirius realise he had not been in a forest since he was at Hogwarts, since that time just after exams had finished that he had strolled through the Forbidden Forest with James. It had been strange to feel both as they owned the place and that it was time to say goodbye. Perhaps in first year, the place had been scary and uninviting (all the more reason to enter). But by the end, he knew the winding tree roots and uneven paths only too well, and somewhere a little way along the path by Hagrid’s hut, was a tree with his and James Potter’s initials carved into it.

By comparison, this forest was _nothing._ Yet it still inspired more fear than the Hogwarts forest had ever done.

Fear, in fact, was the only thing keeping Sirius walking.

“Greyback. Fenrir Greyback… Make his acquaintance and tell him you’re receiving information from Volde- No, the _Dark Lord.”_

He rehearsed under his breath as he walked, too quiet to be heard by anyone under the long cloak and mask of a Death Eater.

This was a ridiculous plan. _Ridiculous._ A plan based entirely on the knowledge that Voldemort would be sending a Death Eater to the werewolf camp, whom the Order had stunned and dragged away, only to replace him with Sirius. Sirius would communicate with Voldemort himself by an enchanted parchment (he wasn’t important enough to do so in person) to gain information of who the werewolves were to kill.

Staring down at the hand drawn map and realising everything in this forest was virtually the same as everything else, Sirius sighed and forced himself to use magic to check the route for a fourth time.

“Show them magic… Show them what you’re capable of so they respect you. Show them something which will interest them.”

He had no idea what interested _werewolves_. Blood, maybe?

And it was easy for Albus Dumbledore to say that, sitting in the comfortable chair in his office and tracking Sirius through an enchanted mirror whilst the younger man attempted to infiltrate a werewolf camp as a Death Eater, learn exactly what their plans were and returned to the Order of the Phoenix in one piece.

He laughed.

It didn’t sound too confident.

The lack of confidence merged with fear, fear which drove Sirius into gripping the wand in his pocket. He, at least, was armed. Perhaps these werewolves had wands, but _they’d_ never been taught by Professor McGongall.

 _She’d_ been uneasy about him going on this mission alone.

He missed them. Already.

“Ah… At last, Sir…”

The voice caught Sirius by surprise, so sudden he almost jumped – thankfully, the robes covered that. Desperately clinging to the illusion of confidence and authority, he turned slowly on the spot. Evidently, his last directions had not been too poor; he had found Greyback.

Except it wasn’t just Greyback. As Dumbledore had expected, there were _three_ of them.

Greyback had to be the man in the centre – Sirius’s stomach gave a twist as he looked him over. There was a look of something primitive about him, a poor copy of a human drawn by someone who had only seen animals; sharp, pointed teeth covered in blood… Matted, tangled body hair which looked far closer to fur, covered only by clothing which _had_ to be made of fur… Nails which could cut through skin. And a leering, jeering smile… The smile of a man who bit and tortured children for fun.

Stomach flipping, Sirius forced himself to turn to the figures on either side.

One was clearly only there for his size and strength. Bigger than Greyback, he too bared his teeth and looked on menacingly from his clumsy footing on the ground. He was the kind of person Sirius could have beaten easily in a wand fight, but he would stand no hope against him in the kind of fights he presumed _they_ fought.

The third was the shortest of them, yet still a head taller than Sirius, staring at him impassively. Clearly, he was the _tamest_ of the group, wearing torn and dirty clothes rather than furs. Yet his hair was still matted and teeth still bloody and even he could rip him apart with ease. It was hardly going to help.

“Greyback. Fenrir Greyback. I lead this pack.”

He didn’t speak, though – he _growled,_ stepping closer to Sirius and extending a filthy hand. He did not take it – the mingled smell of dirt and blood alone from these men made him feel slightly faint.

“Black,” he nodded, relieved to hear his voice was much steadier than anticipated. “Rigel Black. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting too long. I’m sure you were busy.”

He smirked a little, surveying the three. When it wasn’t the full moon, there was little use for werewolves.

“Of course not.” Greyback spoke silkily, evidently weighing up Sirius. He was small and pale under the mask, but he did have a wand. And a lot more of an idea how to use it than he did. Clearly not caring to introduce the others to Black, he led them further through the woods, a route he knew all too well.

Sirius struggled with the pace a little, nearly tripping over several tree roots as the three werewolves weaved through the forest like animals. He was better off behind them, though, given these men likely had all kinds of wars around their camp. Dumbledore had tried to explain to him something about the mixing of a werewolf’s blood with human blood, but Sirius had been rather too put off to think about it.

“Here.”

It was after what felt like hours of silence when Greyback stopped dead, turning on the spot and grinning cruelly at Sirius, who was breathless. The larger two sniggered and even Remus couldn’t hide a smile. Whoever this man was, he clearly couldn’t keep up with a decent walking pace.

“This is camp. I’ve told the others not to speak to you. All communication about your wishes is to be done through me. I daresay I have more respect from them than you right now,” he reached a finger up to pick at his teeth.

“Fine.”

Sirius nodded in what he had hoped was an imperious manner, focusing his attention on the camp.

When they’d stopped, he had not even realised there _was_ anything here – it took a few moments of looking to notice they had reached the side of a hill into which caves had formed. A few people appeared to be moving in and out of them amongst the shadows. Nervously, they saw the little group of figures and hurried off.

“Lupin, take his things and show him to the cave. We have your bed set up already, Sir. Your meal will follow.”

“Cave?” Sirius looked up sharply. This time, he didn’t have to pretend to be horrified at the idea. “I won’t be sleeping in _there.”_

Greyback blinked, the look of a man who had said or done something wrong but couldn’t quite work out how to amend it.

“Then where?”

It was Remus who spoke – impatient, terse.

“I have a tent.”

“A _tent?”_

“If I have to communicate with the Dark Lord about plans, then of course I need a tent. I need privacy. I can’t imagine you expected you would be entitled to hear all his plans?” His eyes narrowed, stepping up to Greybacks face (or chest, at his height).

The werewolf stopped in his tracks, actually thinking before he spoke this time.

“As you wish. Lupin, show him where to put his _tent._ And explain food and water to him. We’ll be in the cave to await your presence this evening, _Sir.”_

Greyback bent into a bow low enough to gain a nod of approval, yet one Remus knew was fuelled by a fair amount of sarcasm. Clearly their leader had expected someone slightly more … Polished. Or maybe _rougher._ Either way, enough beer might solve it…

Grabbing the bag Sirius had been holding for him, Remus slung it over his shoulder with ease and hurried a little way to the left, passing a few nervous, silent figures.

Sirius could do nothing but follow in his wake, assuming this man had been chosen for the initial meeting not for his strength, but for his abilities to speak. The biggest man, after all, had communicated only in grunts.

“I suggest you camp here.”

Sirius’s bag was unceremoniously thrown against a tree stump in a small clearing.

“Here?”

“It’s upwind of camp. I’m presuming your type can’t cope anywhere else,” he narrowed his eyes slightly, stepping back as Rigel pulled out a large sheet of canvas and tapped it with his wand. It had to be said, it was fairly impressive. And a lot warmer than where he would be sleeping tonight.

“As it happens, I would appreciate being further away,” he said nastily. Perhaps the demeanour was exaggerated, but the statement was true. Given a choice, he would be a cosy six or seven miles away from these men. Lupin seemed less crude, at least, but no more compliant or kind than any of the others.

It just went to show, really, why werewolves didn’t live with other wizards.

“Of course. How surprising. I suppose you’ll want to know about the water?”

“I have a wand,” he raised his eyebrows, “I think I’ll cope.”

“And meals?”

“I’ve brought rations.” He nudged the bag with his foot, thinking of the home-cooked meals stowed away in there with a surge of relief.

“And how about three months down the line when your stuffed pheasant has ran out and you’re struggling to cope from having to go four hours without something to eat?”

He was practically growling by the end of it. Sirius had to remind himself he wasn’t _really_ at risk, casually twirling his wand in the chilly air. The indignant werewolf could not really have been a day older than him.

“I’m sure the Dark Lord will provide for me. He gives what I need and,” he took a step closer, “takes away whatever I find to be irksome.”

Remus Lupin was not too stupid to see a threat when he was being slapped in the face with it. And he most definitely wasn’t too stupid not to back down. Jaw set, he gave the Death Eater one last harsh look and stared resolutely over his shoulder instead.

“If that’ll be all. Greyback would be delighted for you to visit the cave tonight. I presume he has more to tell you.”

“Fine.” Sirius shrugged, raising his wand and beginning to place numerous protective wars around his neat little tent. “Tell him that he may see me tonight.”

Remus nodded and turned away, wondering just how crazy Greyback had to be to _want_ his life to be graced with the presence of a judgemental Death Eater who had wrinkled up his nose so much he was starting to look like a rabbit.

Anyway, maybe he wouldn’t last too long.

They _ate_ rabbits from time to time.

Remus’s return to the cave was about as well-received as anticipated. Greyback had sprawled in his crudely made wooden chair and was leering down at the others as they muttered together, presumably planning a hunt.

He had been planning on slipping in unnoticed, but the man let out a great cry as he shifted in through the entrance. Wishing he could throw something at Greyback _hard_ and still live, he raised an eyebrow.

“He’s in his tent.”

“Took you long enough.”

“You did ask. I wasn’t tucking him into bed of my own accord.”

“You know perfectly well why I asked you, Lupin. I suppose it will take a few more tasks to gain your loyalty. Or perhaps just one punishment…”

Remus gritted his teeth but stuck his chin up. Greyback wasn’t winning him over with some nonsense about a wonderful ruler who would give them all rights, it just wasn’t true. Perhaps _he_ would be awarded any blood he wanted and the pleasures of being head of a werewolf army, but it was hardly any good for the rest of them.

“He said he won’t be eating here.”

There it was – the momentary shock and disappointment on Fenrir’s face, fairly well concealed through a mask of harshness and haughtiness. But not quite well enough, for a second. His guest clearly didn’t want to be around that much.

“He’s brought rations or something,” he smirked, pulling up a seat on the rough ground to peer at what the others were doing. Nothing particularly exciting, but important if any of them wanted to eat tonight.

“Rations? They won’t last,” Greyback scoffed. He was likely picturing a wizard huddled over a fire, attempting to cook some potatoes. “Though I suppose you already told him that?”

Remus was battling with his dislike of the Death Eater and annoyance at Greyback for getting him involved against his desire to convince him gently that this was a bad idea and to get things back to how they were supposed to be.

“He said the Dark Lord would provide,” he shrugged.

It was pleasant to watch Greyback trying to decide whether to laugh this man off or trust in the greatness of the Dark Lord. He made a stab at a middle road, snorting and responding in a harsher tone.

“Well, you’d better get working if you want anyone to eat tonight, Lupin. And I suppose you do, knowing how you reacted when I last decided to slow down the food provisions… I’ll hunt for pleasure tonight. You’re on guard duty outside.”

It was a rather petty way at getting back at Remus for being smart with him and they both knew it. Putting him on overnight guard duty, making him sit up all night in the cold. It would give him _plenty_ of time to think over his allegiances, which Greyback seemed to be doing a lot of at the moment.

 _And_ it would give him a nice view of the aftermath of the hunt when they returned. He needed desensitising to it, as far as Greyback was concerned. People of the past had turned him … soft. He had dealt with them, but not so much with the aftermath.

In some attempt to threaten him into submission, he had pulled Remus into his inner circle to treat him both as a sort of son (he was one of _his,_ after all) and someone who needed training and discipline.

Half the time, it meant bestowing priveleges upon him, veritable carrots for a man who had not been quite so entranced by the offer of blood alone. The other half of the time, it was finding out _exactly_ how to push Remus Lupin’s buttons. How to make him hurt and how to make him shut up.

Telling him to sit outside shivering all night was really just a slap to the wrist for some bratty behaviour he sincerely hoped was on the way out. As easily forgotten as it could be, werewolves went through puberty too.

* * *

 

At first glance, the neatly packaged pies and stews had seemed unappetising to Sirius. Rehydrated, reheated and eaten in solitude, he had assumed he would be longing for company and a little more beer.

But considering the alternative…

The sounds of the camp were muffled by the direction of the wind blowing away from his tent, but anyone could hear those shrieks and growls. There was no other word for it than _rowdy._ A class of first years left in a classroom without a teacher for fifteen minutes – except these ones all had sharp teeth, alcohol and a thirst for blood.

The canvas suddenly seemed not _nearly_ thick enough to do its job.

Turning his lights out with a single flick of his wand, Sirius could spot the glow of a fire in the distance from where he sat on his bed (there was a definite comfort to eating in bed). Surely they would be cooking right now? He had heard a large group of them leave the camp earlier that evening, shouting (or maybe that was just how they _spoke_ ) until the only voices left to hear were the ones of children and those remaining behind to discipline them. Mainly women. Wasn’t it wonderful how one of the few aspects of normal society which these werewolves _had_ chosen to keep was sexism?

Sirius thought of Lily Evans and stabbed his pie a little harder with his fork. If one single member of this camp was willing to break away from this and start fighting for Dumbledore, then they might as well start appealing to the Death Eaters too – it was about as likely.

He thought about contacting Dumbledore with an update, but they both knew it was too early for that – the headmaster would become suspicious he was losing his nerve and send someone else on the mission. Probably Benjy Fenwick or something.

Morosely scooping peas into his mouth, Sirius decided he would be more capable of this than Benjy Fenwick, even if that did mean having to drag himself to some horrible werewolf gathering tonight.

It was on nights like these that Remus felt relief, about the best thing he _could_ feel. The camp was crowded and noisy, but it was warm from the company and the fire. A little way along from him lay the carcasses of two deer, a mother and child. Or, more accurately, dinner.

Greyback had laughed harskly into the fire, glancing around at the people huddled at his feet.

 _Disciples,_ he called them sometimes.

Remus had only ever heard the word used in the church his grandma had taken him to once or twice as a child, but he was fairly sure it meant something different in this context.

“You have pleased me! Our allegiance to the Dark Lord is growing and soon we will reap rewards like no others! Tonight, we shall taste the beginnings of what we might have!”

“Praise the Dark Lord and his generosity!”

Remus whipped around in his spot on the ground – those words had been spoken in a voice he knew from earlier, the voice of a man who had resisted the arrival of Black on their camp. But if Greyback was good for anything, it was persuading people of what he wanted…

“Praise him indeed.”

It took several moments for them all to locate the next voice, but Remus found his eyes meeting a pair of grey ones. His hood was still covering his head and he seemed to be trying to stand as far away from the deer as possible.

“Mr Black, Sir, you came… Have a seat.”

Greyback stooped low in some kind of imitation of a bow, moving from his chair.

“I’m not here to grace you with my presence for long,” Black reassured them with a derisive smile, though he took the seat anyway, squinting at the others in the firelight. “The Dark Lord finds no reason for me to communicate with you yet.”

“Any why must he do it through you anyway?”

The woman with grey hair who had spoken against Greyback this morning was staring at him. An older woman with straggly hair and a strong accent from the west Midlands she had just never shaken off, Meg seemed to have no time in her life for Black. Unable to help himself, Remus smiled into the back of his hand. Perhaps she had shouted at him over a hundred more times than she had shouted at this Black, but she felt like an ally now.

“I don’t suppose you assumed he was going to want to talk directly to you?”

The voice just _reeked_ wealth and status. Trust funds. Caviar. Having five different kinds of fork for one meal.

“I thought the Dark Lord wanted us as equals? Surely he would?”

People were shouting out at random now, acting as though having an opinion was going to get them somewhere in this life.

“You shouldn’t be so quick to question him, Meg. Don’t think he doesn’t _know_ what’s going on?”

“ _Quiet!”_

The sound reverberated around the clearing like something had hit them. Several people looked surprised to find they’d even spoken. Black stared at them as they all fell to silence again and Remus wondered whether anyone had ever said no to him in his life.

“The Dark Lord requires me because I know his ways. He does not have _time_ to answer all your petty little worries. Sadly, I have slightly more time to do so. The Dark Lord will make equal anyone who is _loyal_ to him and his cause. Anyone who follows his instructions without question. Have I made myself clear?”

Greyback was fuming – it was harder to tell whether he was more angered by the people’s outburst or how Black was treating them. Yet seconds later he seemed to have made a decision.

“If you have listened to these words,” he snarled, “and decided to be _stupid_ enough not to follow the most powerful wizard of all time in his plan to give you _exactly what you’re so desperate for,_ then I suppose you’re also too stupid to realise that it’s going to have some serious consequences. So I’ll spell them out for you now. You won’t enjoy the pleasures of life on this camp for much longer,” he smiled nastily, “and if you think you are above such punishment, then I will find a personal way to punish _each and every one of you,_ if I must. Greyback does not fail,” the man growled, teeth now bloody from the hunt. “Isn’t that right, Lupin?”

Forty or so pairs of eyes turned towards Remus, who ducked his head slightly and had to force out an answer.

“As I understand it,” he said slowly, “anyone who resists will probably come to regret it.”

Impressed, the man nodded. Remus Lupin wasn’t the easiest of people to crack, at least not compared to the others. He couldn’t be brought around with the promise of blood or extra food. But, kicking and screaming though he might be, Remus seemed to have learnt that resisting the wills of a Death Eater and his leader was going to come with a price.

He didn’t know that wasn’t going to stop Remus anyway.

Happy with the silence for now, it wasn’t long before Greyback dismissed most of them to their beds. Still rather hungry and cold, people filtered away until it was only the select few remaining.

Rigel Black, despite promising he wouldn’t stay long, had remained in his seat by the fire.

“The long and short of it is that the Dark Lord will provide me with the names and locations of those he wishes you to deal with. I will pass them on, aid you in your plans and relay those to him,” Sirius told the group of men huddled around him.

The embers of the fire were dying and the sun had fully set, yet Sirius could still see the remains of the deer carcasses nearby. Watching them tear it apart to eat, mainly raw, had not been pleasant. Thankfully, turning up his nose at that wouldn’t break his cover, so he had some freedom to react.

The remaining men were mainly unsurprising. All were male and some of the largest men Sirius had ever seen, save one or two. Lupin, who seemed to have a lot to say through his eyebrows alone, skulked at the back, stabbing pieces of the flesh onto a twig and browning them slightly on the fire before he ate.

“When you are successful, you will be rewarded,” he gave a tight smile. “If you are unsuccessful, you shall be dealt with according to his wishes.”

Of course, it was important to practise what you preached. Except Sirius was planning on doing the exact opposite.

He would be receiving the names from Voldemort and tell them to the werewolves, but not without informing the Order in time for these people to reach a safe house. React angrily enough to the failure of the first few plans and he wouldn’t be discovered. With Dumbledore’s intentions of making some look like very near misses (and staging an attack so Voldemort himself would believe it successful), he might be able to keep up the pretence of being a Death Eater long enough to protect some people and potentially even turn others away from Voldemort.

If someone like Greyback got a little hurt in the process…

Well, he was struggling to care as much as he probably should have done. Greyback wasn’t just a werewolf, he was a monster.

“When will the first name be?”

The man himself had leaned forward and was rubbing his bloody hands together gleefully.

“He will want someone bitten on the full moon, I’m sure of it,” Sirius nodded, “though that’s not for three weeks. The Dark Lord may see what you’re capable of by asking for some simple killings beforehand, in human form. It may only take a couple of days.”

“Excellent. Seems to be hardly a break from the normal habit. Except more targeted, of course. I’ll be hunting tonight, not sure who it’ll be yet,” he laughed.

The laugh made the pureblood’s stomach churn.

“Young ones?” Someone grunted.

“They do make good sport. All that screaming…” He smirked. “You’ll return in the morning, Sir? We’ll tell you about full moons? … Sir?”

Sirius’s heart was thumping in his chest – that and the deer and the constant smell of blood served as a reminder of his childhood, of James and Lily and the horrors these monsters committed for sheer _fun._ Pretending he simply did not care, he nodded stiffly and rose, hoping to make it to the tent before he had to throw up.

Greyback reached for one of the bones and snapped it with a snarl.

“Still hungry. We’ll leave when the fire dies.”

* * *

 

Guard duty was one of Remus’s favourite things to do in the summer. Watching the sun die on a warm evening, waking up to sunlight and birds signing was about as good as it got. Besides, it made a change from Greyback and the sweaty cave when the nights weren’t too chilly to handle.

But guard duty in this season was a completely different story.

Remus was awoken by the unpleasant feeling of his feet starting to go numb with cold, groaning as he looked back to the cave entrance. It was lucky they were even allowed to sleep on guard duty, he knew, but it wasn’t exactly comfortable.

“There he is!”

Greyback’s voice came from the gloomy distance. It wasn’t fully light yet, but the three men were hurrying back towards the camp gleefully, carrying something shrouded in bloody blankets. Something small. Something _human._

“Morning.” He averted his eyes from the fourth member of their party, but a trickle of blood slowly painting the leaves on the ground told the story. “Success?”

“Very much.”

Fenrir leaned right down to his face and grinned. “I’m off for breakfast. Find me if Black arrives but make sure I’m undisturbed otherwise. Lay _off,_ you two.” He snapped, seizing the bundle of blankets and brushing the others away with a snarl. “You had the dog. Go and do something useful. Find firewood.”

A long time ago, Remus had wondered if this was going to be it. Whether he would be subject to a life of finding firewood.

As it happened, his life had now also extended to sleeping on a pile of leaves and guarding a cave whilst the man who had made his life this way dug into a breakfast which could easily once have been himself.

Was he lucky?

To be alive, yes.

But did he want to think about it?

No.

“Great man, Greyback,” he pulled himself into a sitting position, arms wrapped around himself for warmth. “Evil. Maniac. But great at it…”

He picked at the leaves on the ground for a moment, shredding them absently until his eyes were drawn to something very out of place. A single child’s slipper, designed to look like a rabbit, was lying in the dirt. He couldn’t really pretend to be surprised when that kind of thing happened sometimes, but it did cause a lump to rise in his throat. Maybe he would find the rest of the clothes later, when Greyback disappeared to get some water or mess around with his wand. Surely they would be useful for one of the kids here. At least more so than they would be on a skeleton.

The thought of children sent Remus’s mind in a happily distracted direction. Since the arrival of Black, the younger ones in the camp had been carefully kept silent by those who valued their necks. Those who had not shown themselves to be such good fighters or hunters tended to wind up looking after them.

They could be brats sometimes, too.

True, they had been taken from their parents and were often cold and probably rather bored. But screaming and yelling as they chased each other around never really made the situation better for anyone.

In fairness, it had been a while since Remus was treated as a child here. Not since… Not since he’d made one last decision he thought he could get away with and had been found out and picked by Greyback to become one of his closest men. With no way of knowing the date, he was unsure how long ago it was, but he felt a lot older now.

Maybe he’d just been forced to grow up.

Regardless, since Black had arrived, the children had been quiet, both eager and wary to see how a new arrival was supposed to be treated. Presumably Greyback was planning on giving them one of his threatening little talks at some point. Of course, youth came with resistance, but Fenrir was _very_ good at winning people around, especially when they were so young.

Frowning as he wondered whether _he_ might be chosen to do such a thing (and realising he probably wouldn’t be trusted to), Remus squinted across the camp to watch two small and blurry shadows emerging, talking far too loudly for this time of day.

“Mine!”

“No, _mine!”_

Too high pitched to be any of the adults, he wasn’t surprised to see neither of the owners of the voices were older than six as they approached the cave. Neither would be stupid enough to enter, but occasionally if they whined outside for long enough and someone was in a good mood, they might get some attention and praise for their aggression.

“It’s _mine!”_ The first voice shouted shrilly, scampering off behind a tree. The larger figured stopped and watched for a moment, before running over in determination to win the fight.

“You’ll just drop it anyway! You did last time!”

“Shut _up!”_

Remus wasn’t sure how the situation would go if Greyback was sitting happily in his cave, digging into breakfast only to be disturbed by sounds very similar to the ones his breakfast might have been making that morning if it was alive.

But he didn’t exactly imagine it would be a _positive_ reaction so much as an aggressive and bloody one. Everyone had been taught to shut up in a rather painful way at some point, but there was no harm in teaching that lesson carefully before it reached that stage.

Picking himself up off the ground, Remus sighed and slipped the knife he was holding (for a mixture of defence and boredom) into his pocket.

“Whatever it is, I suggest you keep it _quiet_ before you wake up the entire camp and they find out you’ve been squabbling over something stupid.”

Two pairs of eyes looked down at Remus fearfully from the tree. He had nothing near the authority of Greyback, but he did carry the prestige of someone who was close to him at all times and could easily inform him of what they were doing if he wanted. He had no such intention, but they didn’t need to know that.

“He _took_ it.”

The littler one seemed intent on having the last word, whining as he wriggled the tree, arm outstretched.

“I’m sure you’ll get another. There are plenty out here.” Remus assured him flatly, with absolutely no idea what they were talking about. Unless it was leaves or twigs, this find probably wasn’t going to be something they ran into again. “If you fall out of that tree, you know what’ll happen?” He frowned up at them, watching a small hand grab at an apple for support.

“Bad things?”

“Bag things. Hungry things, for everyone. Get down.”

Fearfully, two pairs of feet hit the ground and Remus found himself looking down at two grubby, curious faces.

“Nobody’s awake yet, nobody you want. Go back to sleep or something while you can…”

“We’re _hungry.”_

Remus wasn’t sure at which point he had stopped being a whining child and had started to find them annoying, and nor was he sure at which point he stopped finding them wholly annoying and had actually started to _listen,_ but it must have happened somewhere. Keen not to convey himself as entirely soft, he shrugged.

“Aren’t we all?”

But as he headed back to his seat by the cave, two pairs of feet pattered quietly after him on the fallen leaves.

* * *

 

When Sirius awoke, just for a second, he thought he was hungover. Confused, head aching and feeling a twinge of what had to be regret, he groaned and stared groggily up at the canvas. Then it was just the matter of putting together what had happened last night.

Checking his watch hopefully, he entertained the notion he might have slept through the entire day and missed his opportunity to see Greyback. Sadly, it was barely even morning.

And he wasn’t hungover – there had been alcohol, but he hadn’t accepted it (on the joint bases of the fact the cups looked as though they had _never_ been washed and because according to some, drinking on a secret mission would actually be a bad idea). Greyback had become more animated, talking about his plans for the evening and had asked Sirius to return the next day…

Groaning, he slipped out of bed.

It didn’t take long to shower (seemed pointless, given the smell) and eat breakfast (generally appreciated, considering how much of his dinner last night had failed to stay inside his stomach), and soon Sirius was ready in his Death Eater robes, psyching himself up for another day among the werewolves.

He pulled a face at the reaction, arranging the robes a little. Fairly, the association with death made black a rather suitable colour for the uniform, but he couldn’t helping thinking it a little … drab. Boring. It was difficult to imagine Narcissa or Bellatrix thought much of these costumes. With a slight shudder at the thought of his cousins, he braced himself and stepped out of the tent.

In all honesty, it didn’t look quite so bad in the light of day.

True, Sirius and the werewolves were hardly _friends._ Sirius would still rather have tried to gain allies from elderly women who offered him cake and complimented his hair, but nobody could have everything. But now they seemed slightly less like horrifying monsters and a little more like very violent homeless people with an unnerving preference for meat.

Feeling _slightly_ more positive about the day ahead and wondering how long it would be before he was physically aching to get drunk with James again, he made his way back towards the cave, following the sound of voices in the distance.

“If it’s literally that, then just share it!”

Someone sounded angry. But not _angry_ angry, just annoyed.

“I found it first!”

“Yeah, but I knew what it _was!”_

“I’ve heard if you chop them in half, then you get two of the same. Would you rather I did that?”

“No!”

“ _No!”_

“Then share the damned caterpillar. All it does is crawl on your hand, stop shouting about it.”

Sirius blinked confusedly, unsure if he had misheard an entire conversation. Yet as he got closer to the voices, it seemed to make more sense.

Lupin was sitting close to the entrance of the cave – no surprise there, it was expected. He wasn’t surrounded by his usual group this time – it seemed to be children. And not just any children.

The dirtiest, scruffiest children Sirius had seen in his whole life.

In fairness, his upbringing had been particularly pristine. Not everyone owned different outfits for indoors and outdoors, or different times of the day. Not every child was forced to have neat hair, clipped nails and squeaky-clean shoes, but these children would have looked scruffy in a _Dickens_ novel. (It was something Lily talked about).

The adults were bad, but it seemed to look different on the children, who didn’t have stubble or wrinkles to roughen their smooth skin a little. In all honest, he couldn’t tell whether either was a boy or a girl – both had matted, dirty hair and mud all over their bodies. Their clothes seemed tatty and too big for them and their nails blackened by dirt. In some weird attempt at continuity, neither seemed to have any shoes either.

“Just… Sit still and be quiet whilst I do this.”

Sirius frowned. He didn’t like those words, however much he didn’t want to blow his cover.

And Remus was pulling a knife from his pocket…

“Good morning.”

His robes rippled on the ground from the force of his arrival. Somewhere down there, he could hear two small gasps. Remus, however, seemed to be maintaining a very deliberate silence for a number of seconds.

Knife in hand, he reached not for a child, but for an apple, slicing it roughly down the middle and handing one half to each terrified-looking child.

“Go,” he muttered, “go now and keep _quiet.”_

He was speaking as though he did not want Sirius to hear them, but it was quiet around and the man was used to listening in on conversations carefully. Watching the werewolf straighten up, Sirius was surprised to see a second, half-bitten apple in the other man’s hand.

It was weird, the idea of a werewolf eating an apple.

Better than the alternative, though.

“Can I help you, _Sir?”_

Inhuman though they were, werewolves hadn’t failed on picking up the human talent for sarcasm.

He arched his eyebrows slightly and Sirius felt as though, if this was a different time and place, he might have met his match for one of those battles fought entirely by glances and scathing looks.

“You know why I’m here.”

“You’re too early.”

“I’m sorry?”

Sirius stepped forward a fraction and raised his eyebrows the exact second Lupin had bitten into the apple. Clearly his comfort zone had just suffered the threat of an invasion; warily, he lowered the thing and set his jaw.

“I could take you to see him now, if you want. But he is still eating his breakfast. And if you remember last night…”

Remus casually turned to face the rabbit slipper still lying on the ground. Sirius’s gaze inevitably followed and he found himself feeling rather shaken.

“I thought not.”

“The Dark Lord,” Sirius drew himself upright, “doesn’t _usually_ wait for people to sit and eat breakfast before their work is done.”

He had no idea what the Dark Lord’s thoughts on the matter were, really. Perhaps he refused to do business before tucking into a plate of bacon and eggs every morning, but he still had more of a clue than this Lupin.

“The Dark Lord,” Remus muttered, though so quietly he could get away with pretending he had never said it, “probably knows _exactly_ when to arrive, unless I’m mistaken.”

Sirius was about to open his mouth and tell the man there was something he very much disliked about his tone, only to find he had paused for thought instead.

 _He_ didn’t seem too convinced by Voldemort.

In fairness, he didn’t seem too convinced by wizards in general, or Greyback, or the grubby children (though there was _something_ rather too kind for a werewolf about how he cut up the apple for them), or anything really. But all that meant was convincing him that the other side was better than Voldemort and asking him to… Have a go at helping, suggest who might be interested.

“I don’t imagine you’ll ever be important enough to be made aware of how the Dark Lord decides to arrange his time,” Sirius said coldly.

He might have felt worse about acting like this, but there was a man in that cave eating a child… Besides, as James had suggested, to get the anger going all you had to do was put Snape’s face on their head and it would come flowing.

Merlin, he missed him.

“Whereas I’m sure you are…”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Lupin, taking another two or three huge bites of the apple and throwing the core to the ground. He spoke only when he had swallowed.

“I get it, you’re more important than us. But he has you out here, camping in a field with scum like us? Giving us a list of names? I know _we’re_ not much, but you can’t be much more.”

It had to be said, out of all of them, Lupin certainly wasn’t the most idiotic. He supposed that was why he was so often chosen to communicate with Sirius – in spite of his dubious loyalty, he could actually string several sentences together without help.

“The Dark Lord has promised beings like you the rights you have been demanding for years if you do his service. Are you really so wise to be questioning his methods or his men?” He raised an eyebrow. “I may not be at his right hand, but I still have the privilege of holding a considerable amount of power and authority over you.”

“Yeah,” Remus tucked the knife back into his pocket and smiled grimly. “And you know, that argument might actually really work if I could, for a single second, believe a word of anything you say about us getting equal rights. I’ll get Greyback now.”

At that, he disappeared, heading into the cave with the knowledge Black would be far too reluctant to follow.

Besides, Sirius had other things on his mind right now.

He’d been sent partially to convince the werewolves that Voldemort would be granting them no such rights if he did win, yet there was already an advocate of that view planted firmly in Greyback’s inner circle.

Firmly, most likely, so Lupin couldn’t stray or lose loyalty without being noticed.

Yet with enough time and information, if he got someone like Lupin on his own, then maybe his mission could have a little more purpose.

All he could hope now, as he sat on a tree stump in wait of Fenrir Greyback, was that Lupin spent a lot more time around impressionable children and Greyback a lot, _lot_ less.

Glancing at the spot on the ground, he noticed the children’s slipper had disappeared, despite being there only a moment ago.

Greyback was probably planning on eating it too.

* * *

 

The feel of soil under Remus’s nails was nothing new. But as the little mound of earth took shape beside the new hole, they seemed to feel dirtier than usual.

Perhaps it was the presence of Black – someone so clean and pristine. Somebody who constantly looked at them as though making an effort to remind them that they were dirty and worthless.

He dug a little harder, angered.

Who _was_ this ‘Dark Lord’, intent on coming into their lives and making it ‘better’?

It hadn’t seemed convincing anyway, but it hardly seemed promising when his men refused to touch the werewolves or even look them in the eye.

Maybe the dirty feeling wasn’t to do with that, though. Perhaps it came simply from what he was doing.

From what Greyback had done? Or from what he was doing in response?

Sometimes it was easier to stay quiet and collect firewood than to spend a long time alone thinking. But Greyback didn’t want him for anything and he wasn’t keen on babysitting for the whole day, so this was it.

Frowning, the man reached into his pocket and extracted the white slipper. It was cleaner than anything he had owned for a long time, but he wasn’t going to say so.

Quickly, as though fearful of being caught, Remus dropped it into the hole and glanced down at it for a couple of moments, feeling as though he was probably meant to say something and having no clue whatsoever of _what._

Maybe he’d seen too much to be allowed to say something – the blood, Fenrir’s leering smile, the way he had smacked his lips and offered Remus a bit because he just _knew_ how he would react.

Whatever.

Maybe it was better for the kid to go this way than to become one of them.

Not better, easier.

He wasn’t interested in seeing someone on the point of freezing or starving because Greyback and his wand had decided not to be gracious for however many days.

And the worst thing?

The wand wasn’t even _his._

The wand Greyback used to give them all water, or to take it away when he was angry. The wand he had taught himself to use to hurt people. He’d never had a _real_ teacher but if he said the right sort of thing in the correct tone, he could inflict pain and fear on every single member of the camp. They were wandless and scared.

Some had tried.

Sometimes the kids played with twigs, until they were silently prised from their hands and thrown into the dirt. Some adults attempted to steal the wand in a raid, but Greyback ensured there was no time for that. One person had even tried to take the very wand itself…

Remus closed his eyes and swallowed hard. That had been costly enough to teach them all a lesson.

Had it worked, it could have changed everything. This wasn’t a play wand or some well-fashioned stick by someone with a good knowledge of wandlore. It was the only way of channelling something they were _all_ capable of.

A real wand, a proper wand from a proper wandmaker.

 _Remus_ knew that his name had been Ollivander, that the wand contained a core of unicorn hair. He knew the handle-end of the wand had a tiny wisp of smoke clumsily carved into it. _He_ knew that the wisp wasn’t part of the wandmaker’s design, but a project by father and son.

But he also knew that the son wasn’t ever going to get to experience the magic, not any more than holding his father’s wand and realising its great power, or watching a man fight off a terrifying beast on a freezing, moonlight night.

Remus’s hand shook as he moved the final fistfuls of dirt back over the hold and roughly patted the ground back into shape.

Fenrir Greyback was a thief.

That wand had belonged to his father.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much to people who've sent kudos and comments, I really appreciate it <3 I'm trying to get chapters up at a decent rate but currently I seem to be spending a lot of my time looking at 12th century medical documents and not enough of it writing this thing.

“How is it?”

The calm voice of Albus Dumbledore – even if only through an enchanted mirror – rushed over Sirius like a warm bath on a cold night.

There was nobody here he could talk to, not properly. He missed the company of his friends, people like James and Lily. Not even just them – _anyone_ who didn’t fancy attacking people for fun would make better company than these.

“Cold, dirty, exhausting.”

It had to be said, he did look a little less lively than usual.

“It must remind you of your days on the Quidditch pitch, in that case.”

Dumbledore’s eyes twinkled momentarily, but he knew when he needed to be serious better than anyone; his tone fell by several degrees.

“We have no word of any suspicion, Sirius. All our tracking on weather and events seems to suggest you should be as safe as a real Death Eater would be right now,” he assured him, “and before you ask, there’s no news from our end either. Everyone is fine.”

Sirius relaxed visibly, shifting in the hope that Dumbledore couldn’t see he was sitting on his unmade bed.

“Fenrir Greyback is…”

“He is, rather,” Dumbledore agreed darkly, knowing exactly what he meant. “And bear in mind, many of the people at that camp are there because of him.”

“You mean-?”

“He bit them, he turned them into werewolves. Yes, he’s been doing it for a long time. Sometimes he chooses to kill, often when it’s adults – he can’t risk them turning around with wands and spells _and_ lycanthropy and taking revenge against him. But people there will have been bitten young and raised around each other. They’ll have strong ties, Sirius, to him and one another.”

“Too strong,” Sirius sighed. “Some of their loyalty is closer to blind obedience.”

“All of them?” Dumbledore was searching for a shred of hope. “Are there none who might resist him and Voldemort? Perhaps people even older than him?”

“There’s one who dislikes me,” Sirius didn’t like to disappoint the old man, but still shook his head glumly, “I don’t think he’d like the real me much either. They all have a problem with us wizards…”

“Due to our mistreatment of them.”

Sirius looked rather uncomfortable and ploughed on. “He doesn’t think that things will get any better with Voldemort so he’s not sold by him, but that doesn’t mean he’ll prefer us.”

“It’s a chance,” Dumbledore sighed. “He’s one to watch, even if nothing comes of it. What’s he called?”

Sirius was hardly keen on the idea of keeping a closer eye on him when he loathed his presence so much already, but it was the entire purpose of the mission. He wanted even less to be letting them down.

“Lupin or something. Think it might just be a nickname, given how wolfy it is.”

Dumbledore smiled wrlry.

“It’s not, actually. Just an unlikely name. I taught his father Transfiguration here, he was a good student. An old spy of mine told me he had offended Greyback somehow and his son was bitten as punishment.”

Sirius’s eyebrows knitted together; he didn’t like Lupin – he was difficult and obstructive, even if only to a character Sirius was playing. But this was a reminder that at some point, he had just been a … normal child, he supposed.

“He seems close to Greyback now,” he said eventually, “inner circle, getting to sleep inside the cave.”

“Appearances can be deceiving,” Dumbledore replied, unconcerned. “I can’t pretend I’ve met him or know what’s he’s like, but if Greyback bit and took him in as a boy like he did with all these people and there’s a certain amount of fight in him, perhaps it’s misdirected away from Greyback?”

“Yeah,” Sirius muttered. “He doesn’t eat people, he just loathes us.”

“Perhaps he sees them and their families and warm clothes and houses as a reminder of what he could have had.”

Feeling slightly… Patronised, maybe, by the old man, Sirius shrugged and willed the conversation to move on. He currently seemed to stand more of a chance with Lupin than the rest of these people. But if Dumbledore thought he was going to march up to him and tell him the _real_ reason he disliked Sirius was because he was jealous of his cloak, angry at Greyback for denying _him_ one and incapable of managing his emotions like a human being, he would probably end up as a bloody pulp on the floor by the end of the week.

“I’m not asking you to turn him against his fellows, raise an army and be ready to fight before the week is up,” Dumbledore smiled at the turmoil on Sirius’s face, indignation mixed with something close to guilt. “For all we know, he might be totally unsuitable. He may pick fights with anyone and everything and refuse to cooperate under others. But keep a watch on him; make a move if you have to.”

“Alright. Anyway, I needed to talk to you _urgently_ because I have a name,” Sirius pressed on.

“Who?”

“Marcus McAllistair,” he told him. It had been a relief to see the enchanted parchment which the Order had stolen from the Death Eater originally intended for this job simply spelled out the name when Voldemort had decided upon it. It had been a double relief for it to be a name Sirius had never heard.

“Of course,” the old man spoke softly, “We’ll have him removed by nightfall, it’ll appear as though he has decided to go on holiday. You’ll need to act angrily but we will fake his demise in order for Voldemort to believe the mission was successful.”

It all sounded rather complicated and risky, so much so that Sirius felt glad he was acting on instruction rather than deciding all of this. Was Dumbledore doing this sort of thing in three or four different contexts all the time?

“How many times will that even work, making it look like an accident?”

“Perhaps only once. We can have someone put up an excellent fight and potentially win another time.”

“So you’re saying that I have until Voldemort’s released two names to do this mission?”

The headmaster sighed. Essentially, he was. But he didn’t really want to tell Sirius that – it had been a last-minute attempt at a plan and not one of his best.

“We’re hoping he might lose faith in the werewolves after the first failure and not use their… Select skills until the full moon. Full moon plans can be entirely different. I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

That attitude had been the one Sirius had always held with Charms homework, sure. But it seemed less suitable when he could be face-to-face with the most evil wizard of all time and having to explain why, in fact, he was not a Death Eater but a member of the Order of the Phoenix, which would go down about as well as if he work an ‘I hate Voldemort’ t-shirt in front of the wizard.

“Tell the werewolves the name and address. Seem excited, expectant…” Dumbledore told him, “don’t make any moves to attend the attack with them, it could arouse suspicion. When they return to tell you that the mission is a failure, you need to be angry.”

“Won’t they expect punishment or something?”

Sirius chewed his lip – he didn’t like these people, but he didn’t really know if he was capable of performing curses on them.

Dumbledore paused in thought for a moment, but seemed quite convinced by the idea when it came to him.

“Stun or petrify them, perform curses to make them look as though they’ve been very much hurt. Wipe their memories so they can’t recall it, but plant a few false ones.”

“So… It’ll feel as though I’ve hurt them and they’ll think I’ve hurt them and remember it, but I… Won’t have?”

Dumbledore nodded.

Had he been in another time or place, Sirius might have wrestled with that approach. Wasn’t that just as bad? Doing everything to make a person think and feel as though he had caused them pain without actually doing it?

Somehow it would make him _feel_ a lot less guilty, especially when it would save lives (potentially) in the longer term. But if someone had the after-pain and the memory of the pain of a hex, then all they really lacked was the pain of the moment…

And though they _said_ werewolves didn’t feel pain the same way as others, he wasn’t so sure.

He’d felt pain more than he cared to think about. He’d felt pain when angry, hurting beyond belief. And though he wasn’t a werewolf, that wouldn’t really change how a curse felt.

Besides, as Dumbledore had pointed out to him, these people had been born humans. They had been normal boys and girls…

Perhaps they had just hardened to it – he doubted he would be able to spend winters sleeping outside or in a cave. But Greyback seemed to have a way of convincing people of things which involved inflicting pain. It set his mind racing, racing long after he exchanged parting words with Dumbledore and the conversation ended.

* * *

 

Fenrir Greyback was drunk.

Remus wasn’t sure if he preferred him drunk or sober.

Sober, he was darker, crueller. His anger was more controlled and focus, far more dangerous.

Drunk, he was somewhat more of a liability. He couldn’t use his wand or even walk in a straight line – but he was sometimes easier to turn around if he was in a jovial mood.

But then the way he looked and smiled at Remus made him uncomfortable, made him want to slap him round the face and force him to sober up.

Either way, at least it was a _change,_ watching him drink merrily in his chair, dirty tankard in his hand as he cheered gleefully.

“Lupin!”

It was only so long before Remus heard his name and sighed, shifting two feet on the ground to be closer to Greyback, who rested a hand on his shoulder and squeezed a little too hard.

“There you are… I want to see you.”

“Mm.”

Remus couldn’t have sounded more non-committal if he had tried.

“You’re one of mine, you know that? One of mine. A connection,” he grinned, leering so close that a shudder ran down the man’s back. “Do you remember that night?”

He remembered that night all too well. Perhaps he had only been four years old, but it was the first and one of the most vivid memories he had. Not something he wanted Greyback to remind him of. Nodding stiffly, Remus folded his arms over his chest and turned slightly on the spot.

“I knew you would come to greatness, from the moment I met you. The moment I met your father,” he slurred, rubbing Remus’s shoulder. “Imagine how you would be without me. Some useless pretty-boy, probably…”

Half the cave let out a snort of raucous laughter at that, Greyback loudest of all. Remus could only shrug – he didn’t want to be some useless pretty-boy wizard who had no idea of what life was really like, yet Greyback had given him a little too much experience in that field. The idea of not having been bitten didn’t sound as catastrophic as the man made it out to be…

“And then I came into your life and-”

“Greyback.”

Black was standing on the threshold, the bottom of his cloak dripping rain onto the floor of the cave as he stared down at them coldly.

It was the first time in his life that Remus had ever been relieved to see Rigel Black, a man whom he despised, entering the place he called his home. Greyback had clearly been intending to carry on his conversation with Remus, probably until it ended in a way he wanted. With the Death Eater in the cave, he easily threw away those intentions, pulled himself to his feet and staggered over to the man.

“Black,” he held out a hand, but Rigel blanked him, refusing to shake it. Remus’s relief to see him drained at the reminder that the man didn’t even view them as touchable.

“I’ve received a name from the Dark Lord,” Black said curtly, pushing through the people sitting on the floor in an effort to get somewhere quieter.

Remus seized the opportunity of people turning their heads to stare at Rigel to move as far away as possible from Greyback, wrapping his arms around his chest and staring at the Death Eater.

All eyes turned to face the two men. Greyback was shivering with anticipation, as passionate about it as Black seemed not to be.

“Marcus McAllistair.”

“And where is he?”

“North-east,” he handed a small scrap of parchment bearing the address to Greyback, who looked at it blankly.

Black furrowed his brows – was there something wrong on the address he’d written? His eyes followed the man’s dirty face, finding only blankness and a lack of understanding. On the verge of snidely asking if it was not good enough for him, only Greyback beat him to it.

“Lupin, come here.”

There was still a trace of alcohol in his tone; even if Black couldn’t tell, he certainly could. Picking himself up, Remus returned to the man’s side, hovering close enough to see the piece of parchment and not so close that he would feel the breath on his neck.

“Well?”

“Not too far from here,” he told him in a low voice, “near Durham, little village.”

“We’ll make a portkey,” Greyback frowned.

Sirius winced internally at the idea of an untrained wizard attempting to make a portkey. Perhaps some of the scars on these people _weren’t_ from full moon attacks and fights, just from shoddy magic performed by a man who clearly had no idea how to use a wand.

“What did he do?”

It was Remus who spoke to Black this time, entirely unsure of what kind of people the Death Eaters were punishing. Was this purely because of his blood status? Or had he done something to offend their so-called ‘Dark Lord’?

“Spoke against the Dark Lord a little too publicly. Some people need to be taken down a little,” he smiled cruelly, hoping this performance was convincing. Greyback nodded eagerly, but Lupin looked less impressed.

“Or killed. Will really change his mind about you,” he muttered.

“It might set an example to others, to those who think they can resist. To those who think the Order of the Phoenix is setting an example…”

“The what?”

Remus’s brows furrowed. If Black was expecting them to know what this Phoenix thing was, he was sorely mistaken. Personally, he was keen to know what it was supposed to be. But Greyback, who clearly didn’t care to discuss such matters, was flashing Black a wide grin.

“We’ll be ready tonight, Sir. The Dark Lord will have his wishes fulfilled and we shall report back to you. Assuming, of course, you won’t be attending?”

Remus smirked at the image of a clean, prim Death Eater embarking on one of their attacks, watching as grown men attacked someone in the dead of night. It was quite pleasant to imagine him squirming uncomfortably, which he seemed to be doing already.

“I imagine the Dark Lord will have some more important tasks for me when you’re carrying out his work,” he said coolly, “tasks which require a more subtle grasp of magic than your methods.”

It was growing up around Walburga Black which had given Sirius such an ability to speak so cruelly. He resented her in more ways than he could count, but her cold attitude certainly came in handy when it came to talking to these werewolves.

Choosing to ignore the comment, it seemed, Greyback nodded.

“We’ll report back. Will you require any proof?”

Sirius’s stomach squirmed.

“His blood will be enough.”

He hadn’t been entirely sure, but it sounded as though Greyback was offering to bring back a head or a limb. Considering a children’s slipper had been more than enough, he ruled out any other potential answers to that question.

Fenrir Greyback gave him a slightly condescending smile, one which questioned the naivety of a man who thought they might return from that kind of mission _without_ being covered in blood.

* * *

 

It was odd, what having a sense of purpose did to Remus.

So much of his time was spent at their camp, staying at Greyback’s right hand for no real reason in particular, gathering firewood and talking about how great it would be when they were all guaranteed blood. It was safe, safer than most things, but it felt meaningless.

On the other hand, when Greyback presented them with some kind of mission… It meant someone would be getting hurt, someone would be screaming whilst huge men ripped at their skin in search of blood. But it also meant getting out of the place for a while, and Greyback was _always_ better once he had let off some steam.

It was always this way – a cycle of relief that he would be doing something and guilt about _what_ they were doing. Of course, these people Black would be providing had done things to offend them of their cause; they weren’t just prey chosen solely out of _boredom._ But a scream was a scream, and every scream played on Remus’s memory a little too much.

For a long time, he hadn’t even been allowed to attend the missions, remaining in the safety of the camp.

But then he’d made himself noticed by Greyback.

Greyback had tested him. Tested his loyalty. Discovered just what made him do as he was told when he was trying to resist these missions.

And now?

Sometimes it was easier just to keep his head down. To linger at the back of a mission and only become involved when it was too late for someone anyway, when all he was going was moving them more swiftly to an inevitable death.

Glancing out of the cave at the group of men huddling around a map in a desperate attempt to read it, Remus fiddled with the coat he was wearing, adjusting it around his frame and taking a moment to prepare himself.

He didn’t have to bite anyone straight away… He could stay back and let the others do it until sneaking in to do his part. They got excited about it, anyway. He would probably be elbowed away before his teeth could reach the body.

“Coming, Lupin? Or are you not hungry?”

“Yeah, coming…”

Clearly, they needed him to help read the map. It had been the case when Black had given them the address – the Death Eater was apparently unaware that Greyback couldn’t _read._ Trust a pureblood to assume that. The others might have thought Remus rather soft for his abilities, but they seemed to be of use to them now. Nobody else’s father had taught them to read until the age of eight.

He might even have been a bit better if it wasn’t for Greyback.

“Now! Come on!”

“I told you the address earlier,” he frowned, “it hasn’t changed.”

“Portkey.”

One of the largest men was pointing at an old rag on the ground, grunting as Remus jogged closer under the pretence of not wanting to miss it. Had things been his way, the portkey would already have left – or wouldn’t be leaving at all.

“One last thing,” Greyback smirked at the men around him. The alcohol had worn off but his good mood remained from the promise of blood and pride from doing the Dark Lord’s work. Noble work, he had called it. “Lupin, I think the time has come for you to show what you’re made of. You’ll be first.”

He smiled. The sight made Remus feel sick.

Testing Remus, always testing. Pushing him a little bit further every time, asking more of him but threatening more if he chose to disobey.

Remus _knew_ the consequences.

But it wasn’t like he had any choice.

He couldn’t _leave._ If he ran away, where would he go? If he broke away from the others, Greyback would find them. If he resisted from the inside of the camp, Greyback would inflict punishment until Remus crumbled. Not just punishment on him, on everyone.

Fingers reaching out to touch the dirty rag with the others, he closed his eyes.

If he bit this man, if he hurt and killed him, was it giving in to Greyback?

But if he didn’t… Greyback would make sure everyone in the camp was very, _very_ hungry until he gained Remus’s obedience. It wouldn’t concern the man if one or two children died in the process.

He swallowed hard, feeling a jerk behind his navel as they started to spin in the darkened forest.

Surely it made _sense_ just to do it. It would harm fewer lives that way…

He didn’t like it. But he didn’t like most things about Fenrir Greyback.

* * *

 

_What few people seemed to realise was that there were several werewolf packs in Great Britain. Groups of people tired of being shunned to the margains of society who had decided to group together and try to make something for themselves._

_They were, perhaps, formulaic in their structure. Their leader would inevitably be one of the oldest, biggest men. The weaker, those less ready to give up a human life for a life of hunting and attacking would be shunted to the edges of these groups. A kind of hierarchy, if you will._

_And, like in all societies, there were rifts. Tensions. Rivalries._

_By comparison, Greyback’s camp had been almost harmonious. Harmonious, perhaps, because of the way in which Greyback exercised his authority and chose to punished those who questioned him. But somewhat better off for it._

_In the north of Scotland, another camp had been somewhat less lucky._

_Their resources low and winters cold, factional rivalries had been high and they had begun to split and scatter, members spreading across the country._

_Many hadn’t made it through the winter at all._

_Ezra had been lucky, or so he thought, to find himself in the camp of Fenrir Greyback._

_Greyback, usually too sensible to allow in the fall-out from another camp which would feed on his resources and oppose his regime, only allowed him in for his youth._

_Barely just an adult, he showed all the signs of someone strong and full of fight, yet young enough to submit to guidance._

_Or at least that was what Fenrir had expected on the night he had pushed Ezra into a cave in a torrent of rain and told him to find somewhere to sleep._

_And maybe it was what would have happened if Ezra had not found a quiet corner next to a boy who looked only three or four years younger than him, who looked a little taken aback to see a new arrival but moved to make room for him all the same._

_Really, it was Greyback’s fault for letting him into the camp in the first place. But Greyback hadn’t expected he would meet Remus Lupin. Or at least that he would know Remus Lupin in the way he did by the time he put a stop to it…_

* * *

 

The forest air came as something of a shock to them, even if it had only been a matter of course since they had been in this place. Away from the neat thatched cottages and shiny cars parked outside, this was what Remus knew – and the only thing he ever felt comfortable with.

He was far from comfort right now, though.

They all were. Except perhaps Marcus McAllistair, the only man they had expected to be suffering tonight.

“ _Stay!_ Don’t move.”

Greyback had growled the order before the rest had even made it to their feet. Remus froze, nose hovering above the soil so close he could smell it.

A moment of silence passed and Greyback shouted out again, ordering them to raise themselves from the ground and stand before him.

“I hope you understand what this means,” he said in a low voice, fists clenched. Someone next to Remus opened his mouth foolishly.

“Greyback, we didn’t know. We couldn’t help it.”

“ _Silence!”_

He walked along the line of men, stopping before Remus and snarling, the sound rumbling in the back of his throat.

“And whose failure is this?”

“Ours, Sir.”

Greyback nodded, leaning towards Remus and tugging his shirt to expose the skin of his shoulders. Blood was still seeping from the wound he had made, a colourful companion to the black eye the youngest had received.

“And who was responsible for the first bite?”

“I was.”

Remus only spoke because he knew others would face punishment if he did not. Stock still, he squeezed his eyes shut as Greyback ran a finger along the teeth marks, collecting up blood.

“So whose failure is the greatest?”

He sucked the blood from his finger and stood back in wait for the passive, tired Remus he loved.

“Mine.”

“You are correct.” He snarled, aiming a kick at the man’s shin, _hard._

Remus gasped, inches from doubling over as Fenrir aimed a second, kicking up dirt and leaves whilst he was forced to grit his teeth. The forest seemed to fuzz around him as he willed his knees not to buckle; any sign of weakness and Greyback had won. He was getting close anyway – head pounding from the punch to his eye, Remus had been the only one to bleed that night.

And then silence.

Only two sets of ragged breathing could be heard – nobody dared speak or move. Greyback recovered from the bout of anger slowly, stumbling backwards to survey them all once again.

It was bad enough when a mission was unsuccessful at any time, but when it was their first task for the Dark Lord, when they would have to report the failure to a Death Eater…

Greyback was scared. Remus had never seen fear on him before, but he saw it now. Behind those clenched fists and scuffed boots was _fear._ Had it not meant quite so much for him too, he might have felt satisfied by it.

As it happened, there was only pain.

Pain and the feel of dread running through his veins, because there was going to be more to this than Greyback’s immediate outburst of anger.

“I hope you realise what this means for us,” he growled, “if we fail the Dark Lord even once more…” He shook his head’ it was difficult to imagine him giving anything akin to a second chance, even if it hadn’t really been their fault.

“Who’ll tell Black?” Someone grunted. Greyback had probably decided that, but none of them were willing to wait in fear of it being them any longer.

Remus was fairly sure he could have a good guess at that question. And from the way the man rounded on him, he was feeling more confident about that by the second – just not about anything else.

“I think, as the most junior of the mission _and_ the person who was supposed to be involved in this… The person whose loyalty I have reason to question… Why don’t you tell us who you think should tell Greyback, Lupin?”

Remus raised his head slowly, biting his bloody lip and letting out the smallest of sighs.

If Greyback didn’t kick him to death, then he was going to be tortured and killed by someone else.

“Now?” He asked flatly, wondering if he would be allowed to sleep before a man whose regime he didn’t even subscribe to was punishing him for something he hadn’t wanted to do.

“I think so. Before the Dark Lord materialises in our camp and decides to take it out on all of us. Now.”

For a moment, he remained still, tossing the thought around his mind. If he went and did as he was told, Black would inevitably inflict some kind of horrible pain and torture on him, possibly even sending him to meet the Dark Lord and suffer his wrath.

If he _resisted,_ Greyback would inflict harm on not only Remus, but others, until he finally caved.

In other words, Fenrir Greyback had backed him into a corner from which there was no escape.

For a second, Remus glanced fleetingly into the distance. The trees were shrouded by darkness, but he knew their positions well enough. If he started running now…

But there were seven other men here, all bigger and stronger than him and willing not to be punished either. Besides, none of them had been kicked in the shins.

Something seemed to creep over Remus’s shoulder – it felt like cold water had been dripped on him. This was a feeling usually reserved for when Greyback was at his worst, but this was directed at the Death Eater he was about to face. He wrestled with it for a moment, but managed a stiff nod despite the terror.

“Fine. But don’t think this is for you or him or anything. I just don’t want people to starve.”

“Whatever it takes, Lupin,” Fenrir seized his bloody shoulder and steered him towards the tent, “you’ll learn soon enough. I’d always hoped you wouldn’t take quite this much convincing.”

He shrugged, mustering all the defiance he could show.

“Sorry to disappoint you quite so much.”

“He was bad for you, you know?”

Greyback had stopped, but only because Remus had frozen at his words. He’d never spoken about what had happened, not properly – he only liked to taunt Remus once in a while. Maybe now he assumed the man was walking to his death and felt hurried to get the last cruel comments in. Clearly, he wanted a reaction, but Remus was giving him one that easily.

“You’re better off without him. He corrupted you, made you soft…”

They stood closer to the tent now, watching the canvas ripple in the night breeze.

“Perhaps Black will harden you up, if you seem so reluctant to learn from my methods.”

Remus wasn’t listening to what Greyback was saying; what he’d been sent to do was beginning to dawn on him and the man was getting what he wanted. He wanted Remus to feel _fear,_ so much fear that he wouldn’t dare speak again. And Remus…

This was different from Greyback. He feared him, but the man was a constant presence, the kind of fear which blended into exhausted wariness and discomfort.

Blind panic only came for fleeting moments between long stretches of being on guard. He knew his methods, too – Greyback could scare him all he wanted, but it took a very regular form.

With Black…

There was not telling what he was capable of. But he had a wand and a magical education, which made him a very much unknown kind of threat. People could do real damage with wands, especially people like the Dark Lord, he was sure.

And if he was being totally and completely honest, he was _scared_ of wands. He had that power in him too, but it was messy and catastrophic at best. To imagine someone angry yet skilful, channelling that magic down a tool made exactly for it…

It would made Greyback’s biting and slashing seem tame, that was for sure.

With the man’s hand still on his back, Remus stumbled towards the tent and wondered if he would ever see the camp again.

* * *

 

Sirius’s pulse was jumping in his chest like a grasshopper, his heart pounding. _He_ didn’t even need to be worried… Dumbledore had contacted him only minutes ago to reassure him Marcus McAllistair was safe, an attack had been staged the moment the werewolves had left and Voldemort had been led to believe, on all accounts, that the mission had been entirely successful.

All _he_ had to do was act angrily to the werewolves’ admission that they had failed and… Punish them.

That was where the problem lay – Sirius, as much as he disliked the werewolves, wasn’t too sure he would manage to cast a Cruciatus curse on them. But as Dumbledore had pointed out, doing absolutely nothing would result in immediate suspicion.

His stomach stewed. On the table sat a bowl of food, untouched. Maybe he would eat once the night was over, but first he had to get through having a werewolf enter his tent.

And given Greyback was their leader…

The thought of having that man inside the only personal space he had wasn’t pleasing. Was he expected to stand up in this room and shout at Greyback for failing to attack someone?

The canvas flapped in what might have been a knock. He knew it was coming – his wards had already gone off, warning him of a stranger’s approach.

“Yes?”

Pulling himself together and hurriedly hiding the enchanted mirror under a cushion, Sirius moved to the entrance of the tent and put on what he assumed was the expression of an expectant Death Eater.

“Sir?”

“Who is it? Oh-”

He had ripped back the canvas, expecting Greyback and finding himself face-to-face with Lupin.

A very blood Lupin, at that. He looked as though he’d been in a fight, except…

They had got McAllistair to safety, surely?

“It’s about the mission.”

“I did ask to see blood,” Sirius smiled twistedly, “you’ve succeeded there.”

He couldn’t help but wonder what on earth had happened to him, though.

“Mm,” Remus seemed to be staring at a point just over his shoulder. “Well, that’s the thing. We didn’t succeed…”

Sirius had been told all his life that he was dramatic, but now came the real time for acting. And it seemed to be working, for the man recoiled at the sight of his frown.

“Repeat yourself.”

“McAllistair… Wasn’t there. On holiday or something.”

“So he’s alive?”

Blood was seeping from the man’s skin onto his tatty shirt and Sirius got lost wondering what had happened, too lost to focus on his words.

“It seems so.”

“And you failed. What’s this?”

He flung out an arm, pointing unceremoniously at the blood and black eye. Lupin even seemed to be standing unevenly, apparently trying not to rest too much weight on his leg.

“Greyback wasn’t impressed either.”

Sirius snorted. Greyback might not have been impressed, but to send someone junior, less important to take what he was clearly expecting to be a terrible punishment was pure cowardice. Cowardice which made his curiosity get the better of him.

“And he sent you here? To tell me?”

“Yes, and for punishment…”

He scuffed his dirty foot into the ground and Sirius felt something odd towards the man – pity, perhaps? He was cold and bloody and being ordered around by Greyback, it could hardly be entirely wonderful.

“But of course.”

Taking inspiration from the man himself, Sirius growled and grabbed Lupin by the less bloody of his shoulders.

“So you think you’re brave?” He sneered. “Not running away from the punishment like a coward? Thinking you can talk your way out of this?”

Remus remained silent, flinching under the hold but moving no further. He wasn’t sure he could have done if he’d wanted – he was frozen to the spit with fear. His man hadn’t scared him until now, but his master might. And he was sure that in their eyes, he was a nobody. Maybe just something to play with…

“Answer me!”

“Running away has consequences,” he said heavily.

Mind racing, Sirius dragged him roughly into the tent. He was hardly one for manhandling, but these men were a lot stronger than him, it could hardly be hurting too much. With a single flick of his wand, Lupin was blindfolded and his hands cuffed by invisible rope, standing in the centre of the tent.

He looked even dirtier than usual against the clean interior, incredibly out of place.

“Are you aware of what else has consequences?!” He shouted, finding it easier now he didn’t have to look him in the eye. He had been so harsh until now, but he knew what it felt like to be filled with fear. He wasn’t really going to _do_ anything, but Lupin needed to be convinced that this was the real deal.

“Failing to meet the requirements of the Dark Lord has consequences! Failing him on your _first ever task_ has consequences!”

Remus trembled.

This was beyond what Greyback did. With Greyback, he could answer back, he could even try to fight. If he did _anything_ here, he might end up not making it to morning.

In some ways, that didn’t matter.

But he didn’t want to go down at the hands of some _stupid_ Dark Lord who wanted them pushed out of society just as much as everyone else.

Black had fallen silent for a moment, watching Remus struggle against the bonds on his wrists.

He raised his wand.

Remus, able to hear the motion ever so slightly in the silence of the night, braced himself.

“ _Stupefy!”_

In one swift movement, Remus crumbled to the floor just as Sirius pulled a cushion to place under his head as he fell. The mirror, now exposed, was filled not with a reflection but the blinking face of Albus Dumbledore.

He hurried forward, pulling the blindfold up and waving a hand in front of Lupin’s eyes.

“He’s out.”  


“Completely? Good, you’ve done well.”

“I thought it would be Greyback,” Sirius admitted, taking a seat at the wooden table and staring down at the body on the floor. In all honesty, he’d expected to have to do a few more stunning spells tonight.

“It’s not?”

“No. The Lupin man,” he frowned, propping the mirror up against his dinner bowl and keeping an eye on him. If he woke up now…

“I’m not surprised. Greyback may be their leader, but I doubt he thinks he should be taking the blame when things go wrong.”

“But that’s ridiculous! He’s the one who signed them up in the first place, he should be taking responsibility!”

Dumbledore smiled benignly, which only managed to infuriate Sirius further – he nearly knocked down the mirror.

“ _What?”_

“You’re a very different man from Fenrir Greyback, Sirius. Far more noble, but that’s a matter for another day. You have a man lying on the floor of your tent, who is currently stunned and expecting to undergo some painful punishment.”

“I could have hurt Greyback,” Sirius whispered. “Really, I could, after some of the things he’s done. And this man isn’t much better, he doesn’t _stop_ it at all, but he was sent here for a cause he doesn’t even support. I’m not sure I can…”

“Again, very noble of you. I can understand, however, why you might be more relaxed about your morals when it comes to Greyback, though you must remember that not all werewolves are like him,” Dumbledore smiled a little, “but not to worry about this man, I have a plan.”

“Does it involve hurting him?”

“It involves a rather complex memory charm, as it happens.”

* * *

 

The sunrise the next morning failed to wake Remus. He failed to wake, in fact, until the sun was much higher in the sky, filtering through the branches of the tree onto his messy face.

He groaned, feeling mud and blood and leaves. He had slept outside again and everything…

Everything _ached._

The events of the previous night seemed to collect in his head, a horrible string of memories slowly coming together like a jigsaw puzzle. The hunt, the failure, Greyback’s anger, Black’s anger… A man with a cold, high-pitched voice and darkness…

“Shit.”

Struggling to pull himself into a sitting position, Remus saw his hands, bloody and dirty.

It was nothing on the rest of him, though. His eye felt like it was screaming out in pain, every muscle in his body ached dully. It was an odd sort of feeling, almost as though he had exercised every single muscle a day ago. But he couldn’t really guess how the Death Eaters worked.

Memories trickled back to him; being punched by Greyback, the Death Eater dragging him into the tent… The way the cold, high voice had cast a spell to cast him pain.

At least, that was what he _thought._

The memory was oddly fuzzy, as though he had suffered a knock to the head – maybe he had. The last memories were far less clear than the rest, as though they hadn’t quite happened. But the blood and memories of screams which surely had to be his own helped to confirm it.

He’d probably been stunned or knocked against a wall, or numerous things. For all he knew, he’d been gone for days.

Remus’s following thought was that he had to find Greyback and show him he had been duly punished and, he supposed, try to move on with his life. But something caught him and he drew his knees to his chest.

Last night he thought he might not make it…

He hadn’t even been sure if he _wanted_ to make it.

But he was here now, sitting in a clearing between the tent and camp, bloody and aching and very much _alive_ because of it.

It was impossible to tell how these people’s minds worked – maybe they kept him alive to set an example or maybe they were just easy on him. But he was going to use it as a show of defiance. This ‘Dark Lord’ hadn’t killed him yet… He could show Rigel Black that he could hurt him and he would still get up the next morning, however bloody and battered, and continue to remind him that he didn’t believe a word of the shit he was saying.

Remus Lupin didn’t feel lucky often. He didn’t really have much to feel lucky _for._ But right now, he was alive. As alive as the man they were supposed to have attacked. Whom _he_ was supposed to have attacked.

For the first time in a long while, he felt a pang of something close to hope.

And it had been a long time since he’d felt that.

His last act of defiance had consequences which had rendered him so hopeless that nothing seemed worthwhile for a long, long time. He had finally found someone and lost him entirely to the hands of Greyback.

And then he had given up on the cause.

_Together,_ they had planned to build a future. They were going to run away – he wasn’t sure how or where, but they had been planning to do it together. Stand up against Greyback and his power.

And when he had lost him… The man had pulled him into the folds of his inner circle and had beaten Remus down until he didn’t dare say a word against him.

But if he could take the Death Eaters and Dark Lord, perhaps he could find a way of doing this? The fight inside him bubbled menacingly, pushing him to his feet and in direction of the camp.

He would have to be cleverer this time, sneaking. But he was older and wiser; even if he was doing it alone, he had the energy to do this now more than ever.

“ _Christ,_ what happened to you?!”

Remus had been so lost in his thoughts that he didn’t notice the woman until she was only a few feet away. The ache pertained, but Death Eaters probably didn’t realise that it was more or less _constant_ around the full moon and something he could deal with.

But the blood and black eye were probably not things Evelyn had been expecting to deal with. Remus might usually have brushed her away – he didn’t really like her, anyway, but this could put her at risk too.

“Didn’t you hear?”

“Hear what?”

“The mission failed last night,” he said heavily. He could only hope Greyback’s anger had subsided – he could avoid the Death Eater, but not him. “He was on holiday or something.”

“Shit…”

She’d summed it up nicely, really. Remus was of a rather similar opinion about what had happened, only with the added trauma of having been there.

“So that was what the noise was last night. I’ve been getting food all morning…”

She thrust a dead rabbit in Remus’s direction.

“Give it to Greyback, will you?”

He looked the bloody fur over and snorted derisively. If she was trying to curry favour with _that,_ she was fighting a losing battle. This would not even convince Greyback to _speak_ to her properly.

“What, so he can throw it away and eat something much better? No chance, eat it yourself.”

The woman paused, but barely for a second before she snatched the rabbit back with greedy eyes. He didn’t like Evelyn for her constant efforts to gain favour with Greyback, which seemed to be made largely of terrifying reverence and put her in a camp of people he wasn’t too keen on. But if he chose between a rabbit going to waste or her having something to eat, then the latter choice was obvious.

“And I advise you stay away until he calls you another meeting. He’s not happy.”

Seriously wishing he could follow his own advice, Remus approached the cave with a limp, wishing he could enter more quietly than usual. But there was a definite cause for a response this time, so much so that he didn’t even blink an eye at the men looking up at him.

Greyback moved slower than the rest, taking in the sight of every injury on Remus until he appeared satisfied.

“What did he say? What did he do?”

“He wasn’t happy,” Remus leaned against the wall and groaned, alarmed by the urgency with which Greyback was speaking and feeling his head pounding. “Really not happy.”

“Is he still unhappy?”

“I wouldn’t know, I passed out,” he told him tiredly, “woke up a little way from the tent, so not so unhappy he decided to kill me.”

“No…” Greyback sat back in his chair and took a drink from his filthy mug. “How did he punish you? Did he inform the Dark Lord?”

The memory of the high-pitched voice, which couldn’t have belonged to Black, resonated in his mind. It had been cold, terrifying – or so he remembered it. With no face to attach to it, it seemed even worse.

“He was here, I think…”

“ _Here?!”_

That really stilted the large man – he jumped, clearly uncomfortable. And he was right to be – one of the most powerful wizards of all time, was angry at him and in his camp.

“We’ll move before the next full moon.”

Remus didn’t have the energy to tell him that he would be able to find their location with very little effort and minimal notice. If moving camp made Greyback less angry and paranoid, then he would put up with a few days of scouting various locations and getting used to eating the new local wildlife.

Nodding in agreement, he raised a hand to his eye and prodded it delicately. It still hurt, but it was getting better…

Greyback sneered at him, marching across the cave to peer out of the entrance. Everyone knew he was waiting for Black to arrive, fearing just how angry he would be and hoping the aggression, at the very least, had been all taken out on Remus last night.

“We’ll need to start looking for new locations,” Greyback muttered fervently.

“Why?” Someone looked up at him in confusion.

“For the move, you imbeciles.”

He was snarling and snapping at all of them and clearly thought that moving to a new location was going to stop the Dark Lord from visiting their camp again. But the Death Eater would be coming with them… What really mattered was that they didn’t _fail._

“We’ll go out this afternoon, scout some places. Wilson, Ferron, Lupin, you should come.”

He knew his reason for being invited was not his own importance or Greyback’s kindness so much as the man’s knowledge that only Remus could easily work out if a place had a sensible wind direction and coverage. It was easy to find somewhere they could find food to eat, but things went much better when Remus was able to source a nice cosy cave for Greyback to eat in.

“Me?” He sighed. “I can’t, not yet.”

“Oh?”

He gestured to his legs, to the black eye – his general condition wasn’t exactly suited for trekking around some unknown hillsides for hours. It seemed to convince Greyback, too, for he looked slightly annoyed that he had done so much to injure the man now.

“Fine, we’ll go in a few days,” he frowned. Lupin had a habit of being useful at things he wasn’t able or willing to do. But even Greyback knew it was foolish to drag him, stumbling, away from the relative comfort of the camp.

Besides, he was suddenly aware of other concerns…

“He’s coming!”

His voice was so loud that several of them seemed to jump out of their skin. Hurrying back towards his seat, the man brushed past Remus in the process, ducking down to whisper to him.

“Get on the floor. Convince him he really made his point.”

Not quite sure why he was doing exactly what Greyback wanted, Remus lay on the ground and closed his eyes. It was rather nice to have another chance to rest when everything was hurting so much, and this _did_ make it less likely for him to get hurt again… But the larger man’s words seemed to be driven much more by an effort to protect himself than Remus.

A figure stopped outside the cave and Remus closed his eyes. That man had tortured him.

Was he _ever_ going to get some peace and quiet?

* * *

 

That morning, Sirius felt like a new man, and in more ways than one.

He had somehow (or so he hoped) managed to convince the werewolves that Lupin had been punished and Voldemort was angry, whilst ensuring Voldemort believed the mission was successful _and_ that Marcus McAllistair was safe.

And in doing so, he had truly convinced the werewolves of whom he was without the risk of being discovered by Voldemort.

Now just came the trick of keeping that up for several months and converting some of these hostile, angry people to a cause they probably wouldn’t support in a million years.

He was smiling to himself, but it was wry. This was impossible, but he would at least have the definite upper hand with Greyback today.

Stepping into the cave as though he _owned_ it, Sirius’s eyes met the apparently unconscious body of Lupin for a moment. Maybe they’d found him in the night and dragged him back inside…

“Greyback.”

“Sir…”

The huge werewolf leapt up from the chair and stooped into a low bow; gone was the attitude and cockiness with which he had viewed Sirius a couple of days ago. This was a man who knew he had done wrong.

Rather compelled to make him feel a little more fear (it suited him), Sirius kept his mouth shut.

“Sir, I… I gather you understood what happened… Last night?” He flinched involuntarily.

“Yes, I was made aware,” he said coolly, “the Dark Lord was displeased. A failure on a first mission… I suppose he set his standards too high.”

Greyback fell even deeper into his bow, confused and angry. _Definite_ issues dealing with emotions, this one.

“Sir, it’s never happened before… It was an unfortunate coincidence… He was clearly travelling somewhere.”

“Are you suggesting it was not your fault? That it was the Dark Lord’s?” He asked harshly, stepping a little closer. Remus dared to open an eye and raise his head slightly from the ground to watch. “Do you wish me to convey that information to him?!”

“No!” Greyback cried.

“Then be careful. As it happens, he has already dealt with his anger…” He cast a glance at the man lying on the floor and sneered. “Pathetic. And he won’t be so kind if it happens a second time. And I suppose he’ll want to meet the leader of the pack. Lord Voldemort does not simply attend to your misbehaved underlings, Greyback. Did you think this was what this was? _Using_ him to teach your men a lesson?”

Remus watched, unsure if anyone had ever expected answers to such a complex set of questions from Greyback before. The man was certainly struggling to find the correct answer – though with how angry Black was, there probably wasn’t one.

Either way, it sounded rather as though the Death Eater was trying to defend Remus.

And that certainly didn’t make sense.

* * *

 

The presence of Rigel Black in the camp was something Remus became used to more quickly than expected. Not that he was becoming comfortable with it, but when Greyback wasn’t actively asking him to visit the cave when there were no messages to convey from the Dark Lord, he mostly kept to himself.

Sometimes the man could be seen wandering the edges of the camp – going, presumably, on pointless walks to nowhere in particular. He only really spoke to Greyback when there was a specific reason, though he had spotted him approaching other members of the camp, which was a cause for curiosity.

What, Greyback himself had asked Remus, did he want with them?

Remus didn’t have the energy to tell him that he was probably looking for signs of someone more competent than Greybacks in the hope of replacing him, instead suggesting he was trying to get more information from them about people to attack.

Yet regardless of what it was, the presence of Rigel was becoming less resented. He served as a good factor to balance out Greyback’s messy leadership style and having to explain the mechanisms of their attacks and the full moons at least gave them something to _do._

At least sometimes.

Right now, he was sitting on a patch of ground, idly shredding leaves as he watched Black’s tent flutter in the breeze, as close as he had been on that night when he had been blindfolded and punished. The man wasn’t inside, so it didn’t matter. All he was doing here was trying to get a break.

It had been a long morning, one on which Greyback had decided to introduce Black to how full moons worked. The man had seemed rather horrified at the thought of forty or so of them all transforming into vicious, biting beasts.

He had seemed even _more_ horrified at the thought of Greyback waiting outside the houses of children to transform, breaking in and biting them, usually dragging them back to the camp to start their new lives.

Remus never liked that part.

That had been _him._

Greyback had broken into his house on a full moon and bitten him with the intention of raising him away from his parents. As he remembered it (and it was difficult, because the memory was hard to deal with), his parents had fought the wolf back skilfully. He’d been raised with them for four more years, but Greyback always got what he wanted and when Remus was eight, he achieved the final stage of his revenge.

Remus prodded the leaves with a twig, frowning as he watched the mud collect on them in clumps.

The memories were hazy now – he had only been around seven and so much had changed since he was at home. His parents had been kind and gentle; they had made him chocolate cake on his birthdays… His mother had helped him find caterpillars in the garden to keep in glass jars as pets.

But they were gone now.

As Greyback reminded him, there was no point thinking about them.

The conflict of thoughts came in there – Greyback insisted _this_ was where people like Remus belonged, not trying to be like humans and controlling their rage. This, he insisted, was who he was meant to be. His parents wouldn’t have liked it, but they were wrong.

Yet hadn’t he been happier before this all? _Greyback_ might have seen himself as a kind of father figure, but he had never been what Lyall had to Remus. He’d never baked him a birthday cake.

Eyes on the ground, he didn’t notice as Black moved closer, apparently now disinterested in their surroundings as he returned to his tent.

When he had been punished by him, he’d woken the next morning in a lot of pain and with an odd surge of something like hope. Hope that there was a way of getting out of this if he could even survive a Death Eater. He couldn’t place quite why he felt it, but the feeling hadn’t died yet.

It was like he was waiting, like he was on borrowed time.

Maybe it was for nothing – maybe he was getting cocky and arrogant and needed Greyback to do something drastic again to take him down a peg, but that little spark of resistance had not yet been crushed.

And Greyback was _wrong._ His parents had loved him more than anyone here ever had.

They’d not turned him out when he was bitten and they wouldn’t have hated him now…

And if it came down to the question of following his parents or Greyback…

With a renewed sense of spirit, he tossed the stick on the ground.

But whatever was going to come next was stopped abruptly by the noise coming from the little tent of Rigel Black.

“Sir.”

Was he talking to the Dark Lord?

Remus must have already passed the wards and Black not been warned because he was outside of the tent at the time. Breath held, he shifted a little closer, careful not to make too much noise on the fallen leaves.

“I spoke to Greyback today. They camp outside houses and attack when they’ve transformed, but I’ve not received a name yet.”

It _had_ to be him… Remus knew that if Rigel became aware of his presence he would be in serious trouble, but this was the most interesting thing he had come across all day, so he’d just have to hope Black didn’t have more wards up than he’d assumed.

There was a pause – he could not hear the voice of this Dark Lord, even if he was straining to hear that cold, high-pitched voice.

“A few hours before the moon rises, I guess,” Black was saying. “You did say I couldn’t be gone too long…”

Remus smirked. Black would have to be gone when the actual moon rose unless he wanted to be ripped to pieces by angry wolves. He was careful to keep listening, though, unsure of what he was hoping for but wondering if he could gain any sort of leverage on the man.

“I’m not really as much of a converter as you’d hoped.”

_That_ didn’t make sense, really. Aside from Remus, everyone seemed fairly taken with the Dark Lord right now – Remus got enough trouble for resisting and people realised these missions mainly included doing as they always did. It was hardly a large ask. Maybe Black was just highly pessimistic.

Now straining even more to hear the voice on the other end of the conversation, he moved so close to the tent that he became fearful a shadow could give him away.

He _could_ outrun Black anytime, though.

“I’ve spoken to the others and they seem either too scared of Greyback or too resentful of me to join us. Not even to _join_ us, just to consider the cause.”

The other side of the conversation was made only of indistinct mumbles, yet Remus was sure this voice was much lower than the high pitch of the man from when he’d been blindfolded. Perhaps he was an intermediate person. He’d mocked Rigel about it, but it was easy to doubt that he actually had that much contact with this very important Dark Lord when he was given such an un-pleasurable task.

“He’s resistant, yeah…”

He shuddered. Was this about him now?

“But you said yourself that he’s not much older than me. Maybe he just resists everything…”

Maybe it wasn’t. It was oddly sympathetic to hear from someone who had punished him only a few nights ago.

Yet it felt so vague now… It was like it had never even happened. The pain had even worn off all in one go, like a switch had been flicked to end it.

“He’s certainly seen enough to have something to oppose if he’s got a cause, but I’m not sure. Lupin might not be _for_ Voldemort-”

Who, Remus found himself thinking, was _Voldemort?_

“-He might not even be for Greyback, from the look of it. But I’m really not sure I can convince him to rebel _against_ the cause for the Dark Lord his camp is worshipping and turn to our cause. It might only be so long before Greyback breaks him.”

As though by magic, everything around Remus seemed to freeze dead. There was no mistaking that voice, yet there was no mistaking those words either. His hands slipped on the muddy ground as he struggled to get up…

He could have gone to Greyback, he could have told him everything and brought his this camp back to exactly how it had been before it all started.

But Remus’s mind was filled with the image of his parents. Of Ezra. Of a four year old boy who was scared and hurting.

Life was far, far too short to avoid opportunities like this. He wasn’t going to sit around and wait for Black to slip up in the act either.

He was going to confront him and find out _everything._


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while, my degree is getting busier right now, but there's some more Remus and Sirius talking here!! Also, if the editing of the second half is crappy, my eyes were ripped to pieces by some onions. Thanks.

Time always passed slowly among the werewolves, but Sirius was rapidly becoming more used to it. If he avoided them at night and kept to himself except when necessary, things were not too bad. In fact, things were starting to get on the verge of _boring_ when he decided to call a meeting with Greyback to discuss their full moon strategy.

It was, as ever, unpleasant and bloody, but Dumbledore had needed to know everything and it was worth sitting through the conversation when it gave him an excuse to hold a much-needed conversation with the outside world later that day. He had walked for a while, trying to work out exactly what needed saying before he returned to the tent and picked up that mirror, the one left in his view at all times.

“Sir.”

“Hello, Sirius,” Dumbledore smiled, “Do you have my news?”

Strange though it sounded, Sirius had actually been looking forward to the full moon. For all the horrors it contained, it meant there was no way of being safe around werewolves and his only option was to get out of the area, which meant disappearing for a night.

James Potter, he’d been told, had literally jumped at the chance to see his friend for a night.

“I spoke to Greyback today,” he nodded, “they camp outside houses and attack when they’ve transformed into wolves, finding weak points to get in. I’ve not been sent a name yet, but the theory behind it is the same each time.”

Dumbledore sighed – they were low on time and this attack would be more complex to address than the previous one. Werewolves were harder to stop than grown men.

“Let us know as soon as you do. When are you planning on leaving the camp?”

“A few hours before the moon rises, I guess.” He sounded resentful. “You did say I couldn’t be gone too long…”

“It’s worthwhile,” Dumbledore said calmly, “you can’t arouse suspicion. How is the real mission going?”

“I’m not as much of a converter as you hoped,” he said dully.

“Well, these things take time.”

“I’ve spoken to some of the others and they seem either too scared of Greyback or too resentful of me to join us. Not even to _join_ us, just to consider the cause.”

“From what you’ve said about Greyback, it is understandable,” Dumbledore leaned backwards in his seat, putting the palms of his hands together as though he was praying to an unknown deity. “You spoke of a man who resented what Greyback was doing? Lupin? What happened after you feigned his punishment?”

“He’s resistant, yeah…” Sirius sighed, “but you said yourself he’s not much older than me. Maybe he just resists everything.”

“That reminds me of a student I once had at Hogwarts. A boy who was so angry at the world that he wished to resist everything, yet someone who found something worth fighting for.”

For a moment, Sirius smiled – it was true. He’d seen enough of the horrors of his parents’ regime to want to rebel. But with Lupin, it was difficult

“He’s certainly seen enough to have something to oppose if he’s got a cause, but I’m not sure,” he sighed. “Lupin might not be _for_ Voldemort. He might not even be for Greyback, from the look of it, but I’m not sure I can convince him to rebel _against_ the cause of the Dark Lord his camp are worshipping and turn him to ours. It might only be so long before Greyback breaks him.”

There was a rustle outside the canvas and Sirius froze – the old man must have seen it, for his eyebrows contracted in fear and curiosity.

“I have wards,” he said quickly, “I would know if anyone was near the tent, don’t worry.”

It was a _little_ condescending to have Dumbledore think he had not even set up basic security measures, but the sound had been much closer to the tent than expected. Maybe one of the children had made the mistake of throwing something at it.

“Good. Back to your mission… Surely there are those in the camp who are oppressed, people on the margins- Sirius?”

Sirius didn’t get to see the look of shock on Dumbledore’s face as he hastily shoved the mirror under a cushion. He had, however, seen the much more important shadow on the wall of the tent. On the table sat his ward, which hadn’t bothered to alert him.

“Who is it? Do you think you can disturb me?”

It was becoming easier to slip into this act when required, but the moment the tent doors opened and he found the man staring him down, it crumbled.

Lupin was white, his grubby face pale and body never quite still, as though he was readying himself for a fight. Before Sirius could even speak he had stormed into the tent, zipped the door shut (he’d struggled for a moment) and turned to look directly into Sirius’s face.

Those brown eyes were _burning._

“I heard what you’re doing. What all of this is.”

Feign innocence, it was all he had to do. Sirius had been doing that for _years._ He rose his wand.

“You dare question the servant of the Dark Lord?”

“Hurt me all you want,” he said, bolder than he had expected to sound. “Cast that spell, I know you’re not working for the Dark Lord, that this is all a ruse. No amount of pain can make me forget it.”

Actually, Sirius thought, a nice memory charm _could_ do that.

But he might as well see what he could learn about Lupin before taking such extreme measures.

“And you’re here to confront me before turning me in? Just another one of Greyback’s lapdogs?”

Remus actually growled slightly, but not for the reasons Sirius thought.

“Don’t think you can play me with manipulation. I won’t be telling Greyback, but that’s definitely not because of what you just said.”

Sirius’s act crumbled around him and he allowed it to, lowering his wand and looking the man over. He could beat him in a wand fight, but Lupin would in a fist fight. He fancied neither.

“Why are you _here?_ Why are you coming into people’s lives just to _pretend?_ Is this all some kind of elaborate joke on us? Because it’s getting tiring.”

Desperation was seeping through his voice and Remus looked weary, as though struck by a kind of tiredness which screamed for him to _just give up._ But he pushed it away, demanding an answer from Black.

“No…” Sirius sighed and pulled out one of the wooden chairs, gesturing towards it for the werewolf. “Believe me, I wouldn’t be around people like y- People like Greyback if I didn’t have a reason.”

“So _why?”_

He did not take the seat – this man was not his friend. Right now, he was just a different kind of enemy than he’d expected.

“There is a Dark Lord,” he said quietly, kicking himself for coming clean, but knowing he could still hit the man with a good memory charm. “He’s active and wants people dead for no reason other than their blood status, or what they are. He wants the help of the werewolves, but he won’t give you anything when he’s done.”

“As though I haven’t said that already,” Remus muttered. “Why does that bring _you_ here?”

“Marcus McAllistair not being in his house on the night of the attack was not a coincidence,” he raised his eyebrows. “The Dark Lor- Voldemort thinks a Death Eater is here, as does Greyback. I’m not. I’m a spy.”

“For who?”

“The other side.”

If he was being honest, Remus wasn’t sure what the Dark Lord or this Voldemort person _was,_ or what he wanted other than to hurt people. But if it was a question of sides, then surely this was bigger than expected…

“So you came to this camp to find out some names and save lives? It’s not going to work for long.”

“I came to this camp to find people who don’t believe in Voldemort’s claims and may choose to fight for our side,” Sirius corrected him. “Sit down.”

Rather warily, Remus took the seat.

“You’re wasting your time. People here are terrified of Greyback and most of them _do_ subscribe to what he wants. The ‘other side’ hasn’t made us any offers either, and nor are we just a private army for either side.”

The fire in Lupin’s eyes had died – he was running his fingers against the grain of the wooden table, dirty nails denting the wood slightly. Sirius looked at him for a moment, _really_ looked. What he saw wasn’t a werewolf, but someone tired of being used as a pawn of some great political scheme.

“We don’t want an army,” he said quietly. “We want to make people’s lives better, everyone’s. I can’t pretend for a minute that we’re going to let werewolves come and live in our society whilst still ripping children apart for fun every night…” He swallowed – Lupin’s eyes were fixed on him now, steady and wary. “But you have as much magic as us and are only an unstoppable danger one night a month.”

“You think we’re dirty,” Remus said bluntly. “People refuse to touch us.”

“Well…” Sirius smiled rather sadly at the look of the hands on the table. There were no prizes for guessing who had washed more recently. “You are dirty right now, but it’s only _mud.”_

A flicker of something close to a smile crossed Remus’s face.

“I can’t pretend we’ll convert everyone to loving werewolves, but this is about changing those views on people like you and- And allowing you to live out that part in secret if you prefer.”

“What’s in it for you?”

Remus was suspicious, and not without good reason. Nobody signed up for something that dangerous for sheer fun.

Sirius fiddled with his sleeve for a moment – he could have spun a lie, or said something more vague. But what he wanted, what he _always_ wanted was the truth.

“My parents support Voldemort. My brother, my cousins… My whole wretched family who think people are worthless because of who they are. I maybe agreed until I was eleven, but then I went to Hogwarts and realise that we’re not _better_ and no more worthy.”

“You went to Hogwarts?” He breathed. It seemed obvious now, but he’d not really thought about Black as a person, as the person underneath that dark cloak and eerie mask.

“Uh- Yeah. I met people like Albus Dumbledore, who taught me that labels and names are… Not something you can judge someone by.”

“Albus Dumbledore?”

He’d really caught Remus’s attention now – the man sat up, excited to hear a name he knew.

“Yeah, the headmaster…”

“He taught my father!”

It was one of the few things he had remembered; his father hadn’t liked to talk about Hogwarts when Remus would never be able to go, but his younger self had begged and begged for stories to make his own fantasies about it. Albus Dumbledore had taught his father Transfiguration the entire time he was there and had been his favourite teacher.

Sirius’s face lit up almost as much – Dumbledore was a name Lupin _knew_ and clearly trusted. Dumbledore was about to become his shiniest bargaining tool.

“He leads our organisation, our side. I report back to him about all of this.”

Remus appeared to be slightly in awe and rather jealous, biting his lip and nodding. Quick to seize the opportunity, Sirius brought up something else which could hook Remus in.

“You remember your father, then?” He asked, lowering his voice slightly.

Nobody had asked Remus that question for years and he wasn’t willing to divulge much yet. He shrugged.

“A little. I was young when I was bitten but Greyback didn’t take me until four years later, my father fought him off.”

Sirius frowned.

“Did you talk much about Albus Dumbledore?”

“Bits and pieces. He was his favourite teacher.”

Ideas were forming thick and fast now – he stood and hurried to retrieve the mirror from under the cushion.

“Would you like to speak to him?”

Remus’s mouth fell open slightly. He had no idea how that was going to happen, but being able to speak to a man who had known his father and didn’t hate him was an opportunity he had never been offered before.

“That’s possible?” He tried not to get his hopes up, but his heart was racing. “I mean, if it is possible, I’d love it…”

Feeling it was a lot easier to talk to Lupin now they had established some common ground, Sirius tapped the mirror impatiently and watched as the face of Albus Dumbledore came into view. He looked worried, yet smiled.

“Sirius, what happened?”

It was only now that the pureblood realised he had a lot to explain to the old man. But if he was going to have to say, maybe he could make something interesting out of it.

“Someone heard my entire conversation with you outside the tent.”

“Do you need us to get you out of there?”

Smiled a little and shook his head. “Just so happens that it was Lupin, Lupin whose father you taught. We’ve had a conversation about what he heard and I was wondering if he could speak to you.”

Dumbledore blinked, but didn’t look as shocked as Sirius had anticipated.

“Of course.”

He offered the mirror to Remus, who took it slowly and stared down at the glass with an expression of surprise. What he saw was not his own reflection, but the face of another man – an older man, with a white beard, purple robes and twinkling eyes. If that wasn’t already enough of a shock, he was _smiling_ at Remus.

“Hello, Mr Lupin.”

Remus’s words got stuck in his throat as he attempted to make a response – he was sure nobody had ever addressed him so politely.

“Mr Dumbledore,” he mumbled, hands trembling more than he wished they were. “You taught my father…”

There was an odd suppression of emotion in his voice; Sirius felt for the first time as though he was infringing on something which wasn’t for him to hear. Nodding at the man, he stepped back a little to busy himself with some washing up which had been sitting around for days.

“I did,” the old man smiled, “I remember him fairly well, he was a good student. A kind man with good grades, a hard worker.”

Dumbledore wasn’t lying – he _did_ remember Lyall Lupin, but he did have to jog his memory to pin down the more precise details about him. As a quiet, non-disruptive student who never stuck his neck out, he wasn’t necessarily the _most_ memorable.

Remus nodded; it sounded like the man he remembered, kind and hard-working… He tried not to let himself get lost in those thoughts, but Dumbledore saw the look in his eye a little too soon.

“Do you remember him well?”

“Bits of…” He turned away, eyes meeting a point on the floor a few metres away. “He was good, a good father.”

“I imagine he was,” Dumbledore said softly, “I’m sorry you cannot remember him better. I imagine it’s nice to have someone to talk to about him after so long?”

Remus fiddled with his sleeve and nodded. Had his eyes not been fixed elsewhere, he might have noticed the old man looking closely in the mirror, as though trying to imagine what this man would look like if he had not been raised among werewolves and subjected to too much hardship.

He didn’t answer.

“You look like him, too. It’s Remus, isn’t it?”

Remus turned now, wary.

“Remus, as you’ve heard Sirius tell me, I know you’ve found out why he’s really here. I suppose you have some questions, if you’d like me to answer them,” he offered lightly.

If truth be told, Remus was so full of questions that he didn’t know where to start; it was as though a whole new world had been opened.

“Why are you here?” He asked eventually, trying not to let his imagination get ahead of him. Maybe there was something in this which could help him, but Remus was far too used to consistent disappointment to make such a grand assumption. “Why are you trying to bring round werewolves? We’re not your army, not any more than we are to the other side. Sir.” He added hastily.

Dumbledore, whom Remus had been expecting to see offended by that, simply nodded as though he was considering the question.

“Remus,” he said slowly, “Sirius has put a lot of effort in his portrayal of a Death Eater and what you may notice is that he is following the typical trend of these men in doing so. Men who want to enlist you as subordinates to carry out Voldemort’s work. What we want are… Equals. We want to unite with anyone who opposes Voldemort.”

“Hang on,” Remus said sharply, turning to face Sirius, “you _hurt_ me. And that man with the high-pitched voice. If you’re so much better than him, why are you torturing people just to keep up your pretence?”

Sirius looked close to an angry outburst, but Dumbledore luckily managed to speak before him.

“What do you remember that night?”

“I remember coming in here. Then you tied me up and blindfolded me and used magic to hurt me!” His voice lowered, anger igniting in his eyes. Were they really any better than the rest of them?

“No,” Dumbledore said simply, “what do you _really_ remember? Tell me the exact memories, if you will.”

Remus struggled for a moment and closed his eyes, straining to focus on the events of that night as though it would actually help.

“I remember being dragged into the tent and blindfolded and tied… Then waking up the next morning and aching like I’d been running miles. And screaming… And a high-pitched voice…”

“Did the pain only feel as though you had exercised new muscles? Did it disappear rather suddenly?”

“I guess…”

“That’s because it was fake,” Sirius said helpfully, dropping back into his seat and resting both elbows on the tabletop. “We didn’t want to _really_ hurt you. I stunned you, put in a couple of false memories of a high-pitched voice and a voice screaming and gave you something to weaken your muscles- sorry,” he added, something which earned him a look of increased respect, “you just stitched the pieces together from there, really. Those memories should be fading now, soon they’ll be gone.”

It was an awful lot to take in – he didn’t even _know_ magic was capable of doing that and whilst it was reassuring to think they hadn’t hurt him…

“Do you always do that?”  He frowned, brows furrowed. “Add in false memories, make people think things?”

Sirius moved to exchange a look in the mirror with Dumbledore – both men needed to remember that they were armed and Remus was not. They needed him to _trust_ them.

“We hadn’t done it before and we haven’t since,” Dumbledore said simply. “Sirius was new to the task, which is why the memories seemed so hazy even from the start.”

Silence fell, making the pureblood feel rather uncomfortable as he wondered what was coming next, but Lupin was staring at the canvas walls as he tried to process this. One day ago, he thought there was a Death Eater in the camp. Now these people were claiming they would be taking them down…

“If you want werewolves to be equal to humans,” he said slowly, “does that mean you want people like Greyback to be allowed to do _that?”_

“No!”

Both voices cried out at the same time, Sirius even more adamant than his old professor.

“I can’t pretend to enjoy what some werewolves have done,” he said carefully, “but being a werewolf isn’t inherently bad itself. It cannot be helped. What Greyback done can be.”

He nodded – he could agree with that. He hated the way they were treated, but no more did he think that those like their leader should be allowed to carry on as they did…

“Everyone has a choice to do good or evil,” he said, “werewolves included. That choice has not been made by you simply because of what you are.”

Remus sighed. He… Perhaps he wasn’t what Dumbledore was looking for either. He hadn’t _stopped_ all those attacks, had he? He hadn’t stood up to Greyback as much as he could have done.

Dumbledore seemed to read that on his face.

“And if someone has truly changed from what they have done in their past, then we will welcome them with open arms.”

He nodded stiffly, feeling as though any more information right now might cause him to explode.

“Thank you for talking to me about my father. And for, you know… Not actually punishing me,” he managed a small smile, feeling exhausted.

“Whenever you wish, Remus. All I ask is that you think about it. I cannot offer you a perfect or easy life, but we are trying to make a world where your status as a werewolf won’t limit your life in any way.”

“Okay.” It was all he managed before he passed the mirror back to Sirius and watched the men exchange friendly parting words.

The mirror lay on the table now, abandoned as Sirius turned to look at him.

“Any thoughts?”

“Yeah,” Remus said quietly. “Yeah, I need to take a walk…”

Sirius showed Remus out of the tent a minute later, after he assured the man he wouldn’t be telling Greyback, but needed to think things over. Even if he wasn’t revealing his secret, he needed to consider what joining would mean for him.

More importantly, he needed a chance to get his head around it all – for Sirius and Dumbledore, they had been explaining the simplest of things, but Remus felt as though his head was ready to burst from new information.

And if he was being honest, he wanted some time to think about his father alone. He wasn’t showing anyone that.

* * *

 

Legs leading on his usual route, Remus took the muddy path away from the camp and headed towards the stream, where the sound of rushing water would muffle his presence to anyone nearby.

These people wanted something which sounded, at face value, wonderful. And he wasn’t scared of the danger, either; he’d lived with Greyback most of his life, so why should he be scared to oppose people like him?

Yet he was still worried. Despite their reassurances, he didn’t just want to become a political pawn for another side, a weapon, a kind of perverse mascot. Dumbledore had treated him with dignity; Sirius had been kinder to him than his Death Eater self, but that didn’t speak for the rest of them.

But then, what did he have to lose?

If he abandoned the camp, would Greyback become worse for the others?

Maybe, but then so much of his anger resulted from things Remus had done, so this might be good for him.

Sitting on the bank of the stream, he made the foolish decision to submerge his feet in the water, shivering.

Would he even leave the camp? Or would Black leave and get Remus to continue with the job?

Surely not, surely if the werewolves _were_ supposed to be equals, then he wouldn’t have to stay put.

But that was daunting too, beyond belief – the idea of living in society with normal wizards. He wouldn’t know what to do and he certainly wouldn’t have anywhere to live. But he did like the idea of having a chance at it…

Sirius and Dumbledore wanted him to join, but he didn’t really _know_ them.

And so he thought of Ezra. Ezra who had wanted to run away. He smiled to himself a little – maybe Ezra wouldn’t have wanted to be under any authority, but he might have given Dumbledore a chance. And his parents… Lyall had liked Dumbledore, surely their ideas wouldn’t have conflicted? His mother had never met him, but she hadn’t even been a witch. _She_ would have found ideas of blood purity ridiculous.

Remus pulled his feet from the water and shuddered. The sun was going down now – he would have to wait until morning to speak to Sirius.

But he was going to make what was quite possibly the boldest decision of his life.

If the Order of the Phoenix fought against everything Fenrir Greyback stood for, then they could sign him up.

* * *

 

Sirius was unsure what he expected from Remus – whether or not he would come, even if he would come, but something made him think it was more likely than not. Perhaps he had tried to hide it and perhaps he hadn’t, but regardless, there had been something new and hopeful in the werewolf by the time their meeting was over.

If he was being brutally honest with himself, too, he rather wanted Remus to join. Not just because it meant his mission had been successful, but because he was beginning to feel bad for the man – his life had been destroyed by Greyback just as much as those who hadn’t survived and when he really thought about it, it probably wouldn’t have been easy for him to raise a rebellion against Greyback when there was only one of him.

Of course, if Remus _didn’t_ come and ask to join the Order, his respect would dwindle. But then he might have a good case to get out of here and try to convert another camp – if Remus, the most argumentative and resistant of them all wouldn’t join, then who would?

It was something which he found himself thinking over a lot that day and the next morning, staying put in his tent except for the occasional walk. He had no reason to see Greyback and wasn’t really keen to do so, after all…

In fact, Sirius had taken to sitting on the table in his tent and watching the wards to hope Lupin might come soon.

It was around four in the afternoon when he actually did come, setting off the charms until the tent was filled with strange sounds to alert the man of the presence of another. In a second, Sirius was poking his head around the canvas doors, delighted and relieved to see it was only Remus.

He looked stressed, but pleased to be there.

“Hello… I’ve made my decision.”

There was no preamble, no smiles and small talk he had come to expect from some of the members of the Order. Not that it was always bad, but he knew Lupin meant business now – and probably felt slightly awkward because their entire relationship had been established on the basis that he was someone totally different.

Either that, or Greyback had raised him to hate small talk.

“Come in, let’s not do that outside,” he ushered Remus in, having to check himself for a moment to ensure he had dropped the harsh Death Eater act – if they were going to have to work together, then they would at least need to be _friendly._

Remus looked surprised at that, but stepped inside, this time relaxed enough to take a look around the rather interesting interior of the tent. It was bigger on the inside – though, being a wizard, that shouldn’t surprise Remus. Yet it was also a lot cleaner and cosier than anywhere on the camp. Feeling as though he ought to make him feel comfortable, Sirius ushered him to a chair.

“You want to join us?” He asked, taking a sip of the last dregs of his coffee and sitting opposite him. “Before you commit totally, I can tell you that it won’t always be easy or pleasant.”

He shrugged clumsily, tracing his fingers over the wood on the table and looking unconcerned.

“Nor is any of this… I’m used to danger,” he admitted.

Sirius realised he probably had a point – growing up around Fenrir Greyback likely gave him a rather good sense of when to duck.

“And…” Sirius sighed a little, “you might have to be stuck to me for a while. You’ll get to meet Dumbledore and attend our meetings and things, but unless you want to be stuck in werewolf camps all the time, then you’ll need to be paired up with someone.”

“Because I can’t use a wand?” Remus looked him directly in the eye and Sirius suddenly felt quite exposed.

“Well…”

“It’s true that I can’t,” he said calmly, “you can tell me if that’s it. I’d rather it was that than because people didn’t trust me or something.”

“It’s that,” Sirius breathed out a sigh of relief, “I mean, I’ve seen you can hold your own, but if somebody tries to jinx you and you’re on your own.”

The werewolf nodded and Sirius was drawn to his dirty nails, trying to picture how the man would look after a good wash.

“I can teach you some spells, if you want. You can have a wand.”

Clearly, those words had more of an effect on Remus than he’d anticipated – he stopped moving his hands across the table and looked up, staring in silence for a few moments.

“… I don’t have money for one.”

“The Order probably has a fund or something, you’ll need it for defence.”

“Greyback’s wand used to belong to my father. He stole it when he took me.”

Sirius had most certainly not expected _that._ Remus’s tone was almost robotic, as though he had rehearsed those words and rid himself of all emotion. But what he felt was nothing _but_ emotion. If Remus had lost his parents to Greyback, surely he should have his father’s wand… If he thought too hard about it, he could picture the horrible man snatching it from the hand of Remus’s dead father.

He shuddered.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“It’s not you! It’s him, that wand should belong to _you.”_

“You think?”

In an odd contrast to his emotional numbness from a few seconds ago, Remus had _smiled –_ more than Sirius had ever seen him do before.

“Yeah. In terms of wandlore, it might depend on how he took it and things,” Sirius chewed his lip. In terms of wandlore, it probably _did_ belong to the man who had defeated Lyall, but he didn’t really care about wandlore anyway. “But then if you took it from him, then it would be rightfully yours anyway,” he mused. “Regardless, I’m guessing you don’t have much left from your father?”

SHe was prodding where it hurt now, half expecting to be told very fiercely to shut up. This only had to be working relationship and he was already asking some very personal questions, but Lupin seemed unbothered.

“Not anything.”

“Oh. I’m… I’m sorry.”

Sirius didn’t care about his own parents, not one bit. If they died, he would probably be celebrating, but if he imagined losing someone like _James_ and not having anything to remember them by, it was easier to understand how Remus might have felt. It also made a lot of sense why he had been so keen to talk to Dumbledore, clutching at any traces of his father.

“It’s fine.”

His expression was less convincing – eyes flitting around, looking anywhere but at Sirius. In an effort to lighten the tone, he smiled at him.

“You can probably talk to Dumbledore again at some point. I’m sure he’d like to thank you for joining when he gets a minute, but he is quite busy…”

There was a note of bitterness there – or was it just jealousy? Sirius was stuck here with little to do but write reports for the Order and examine different types of toadstools. He missed Quidditch and card games and _James._

“Thank you… How did that _work?”_

“It’s a mirror.”

He was less bored _now,_ leaping from his seat to find the mirror under a pile of messy blankets. The one Dumbledore used had been lent to him by James Potter, making it difficult for Sirius to communicate with his best friend – though it was useful to have Dumbledore himself to talk to.

“An enchanted mirror, I mean. It’s usually just a normal mirror, but if both people are looking at theirs, then you can see each other. If you call someone’s name out to it, then they might respond too.”

He handed it over, though it was only a mirror right now – yet Remus’s response convinced him that the headmaster had suddenly appeared.

Both hands were trembling around the thing as he stared at it, face flooded with shock. Sirius tried to peer over his shoulder to see, but it looked normal.

“What is it? Can you see something in it?”

“Yeah… No. Don’t worry…”

“What?”

“Just me.”

Sirius collapsed back into his chair, puzzled, but only for a moment. Remus was only seeing his face in the mirror, after all.

“I don’t understa- There are no mirrors in this camp, are there?”

Remus shook his head. “Sometimes in houses we break into and there’s water and stuff, but…” He ran his dirty finger over the glass, blinking.

Had he not properly seen his reflection since childhood? If that was the case, then he had change a lot ever since…

He was still young, of course – Lupin couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than Sirius at best. There were no lines on his face and no facial hair other than the slight smattering of stubble they all got in the evening (there _had_ to have been magic there). The rest of his hair didn’t seem to have much trouble growing, though – it was longer than most men wore it and _very_ matted. And clearly these men didn’t really wash, because his face was extremely grubby, with residual traces of mud and dirt which probably never came off.

But beneath that?

His brown eyes had seen too much, and his skin was littered with the remnants of scars and bruises undoubtedly from Greyback. His teeth weren’t too bad, but he supposed werewolves didn’t each much sugar.

But if he was honest, if Remus scrubbed up a little, he might not have been _too_ unattractive.

Turning away, Sirius gave the man a minute to process the sight, looking back only when he heard it being lowered to the table.

“Need a haircut,” he smiled wryly, running a hand through his matted hair. “It’s been a while.”

He wasn’t _wrong,_ and he seriously needed some conditioner too. He should probably scrub up if he was ever going to meet the rest of the Order.

He hadn’t ever cut his own hair, but Ezra had sat him down to do it once. Had he not done it since then? He brushed his fingers through it, but it wasn’t easy.

“Nah,” Sirius grinned, “long hair is in.”

He brushed a hand through his own and allowed himself to pry about one thing which had been bugging him for a while now.

“How old are you? Given you’re joining the Order, you’d better be an adult,” he frowned. It would be a surprise if he was under seventeen, but he was young enough to make Sirius feel the need to ask.

“I…” Remus toyed with the tatty sleeve of his shirt, suddenly feeling rather exposed and inferior. They were in his domain now and Sirius was around his age, but clean and neat and able to read. He still couldn’t shake off the memory of the man he has been pretending to be either, who looked down on them all so much. “I don’t really know. I don’t know what date it _is._ We don’t really _do_ dates,” he admitted.

Sirius couldn’t imagine that, not knowing how old he was. Unbeknownst to Remus, he was feeling a little out of depth himself. Remus was probably seeing him as Sirius himself saw his parents, overly clean and fussy about trivial matters. He was on the verge of deciding to dress more sloppily in front of Remus when he spoke up.

“I do know my birthday, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Tenth of March, 1960.”

“Which makes you…” Sirius didn’t really need to do the maths, because he was only a few months older than Remus. “Twenty, same age as me,” he smiled. “It’s October the eighteenth, 1979.”

“Thanks. I doubt it matters to anyone here, but it’s nice to know… I just lose track of things. I think Greyback just decided I was an adult one day.”

“You’re definitely an adult now,” Sirius smiled, slightly awkward at this attempt at friendship. “But still young enough to have no idea what you’re doing, if you’re at all like me.”

Remus smiled to himself – as far as he could see, this man was the most put-together person he’d _ever_ met. His attempt at self-deprecating humour was amusing, but it was hard to hear it from a man who probably washed his hair every day.

“When you were speaking to Mr Dumbledore on the mirror the other day,” Remus started, watching Sirius get up and wander over to his kettle, fumbling with it. “You spoke about leaving for the full moon. I suggest you leave maybe a day before, because it can get pretty rowdy.”

It was for reasons like this that made it so useful having Remus around – Sirius had no clue about how these people acted around the full moon, mainly because society made such a point of avoiding them.

“I appreciate it. Do you want a cup of tea?”

Lupin might not have been his first choice of company in the world, but it was definitely nice to have someone to talk to here – his voice had been beginning to feel as though it was fading from lack of use.

“Um- Yeah… Thanks,” he sounded suspicious, watching him made the drinks and feeling odd. Nobody had ever made him feel at home like this – not that there was anybody to.

“Greyback gets very excited when it’s coming and he gets hungry. Sometimes he-” Remus paused, unsure as to whether it was wise to continue, but Sirius ushered him on with a look, “sometimes he stops himself from eating much so that he can take in as much as possible as a wolf. And he’s not really docile when hungry.”

“Understandable,” Sirius placed a mug of tea in front of Remus and settled back down, relieved he wouldn’t have to experience this. “Listen, do you think there’s anything we can do which will make it look less suspicious if his mission at the full moon fails? Because we’re here to be saving lives, but if Greyback works out what we’re doing, we won’t be good for much longer.”

“Thanks,” Remus cupped both hands around the mug and sighed as he drew in its warmth. It wasn’t often that he had tea, but sometimes when they raised a house for an attack, they’d managed to get some. “And I suppose it’s just going to be more convincing if everyone sees the person we’re meant to be attacking and it looks like they were actually there. You can remember what happened on the full moon once you transform back.”

“We _could_ try a memory charm,” Sirius mused.

“It wouldn’t work. You’d need to get close to him when he was sleeping, which is just impossible.

“If you could…”

“I can’t, remember? Sorry…” He lifted the mug to his lips and took a long drink with a sigh, still holding it in both hands. It reminded Sirius of something, but he couldn’t think what. “He might just actually have to _see_ something to be convinced.”

Sirius thought for a moment about just how useful it would be to have someone teach Remus how to use his magic, but there was no chance of doing this before the full moon.

“A decoy, you think?”

“It would need to be good. Well, it would need to _smell_ good. We can’t see quite as many colours, but we can smell over a long distance. And even then, you need someone to fight him off…” He sighed.

“You sound,”  Sirius started slowly – he couldn’t help but wonder about the speed at which these ideas were coming to Remus, a man who had never thrown off Greyback before, “you sound like you’ve tried this before, tricking Greyback…”

“I have,” he said simply, delaying the conversation with another long drink.

Sirius was burning to know when and how, but he restrained himself from pushing too far.

“It didn’t work.”

“Oh…” He frowned. Remus was making it harder, but he wanted to know now. “Then how did you…  Survive?”

There werewolf sighed, but from tiredness this time, putting his mug down on the table. “Greyback in his wolf form is very different from Greyback in his human form. In some ways. In others, I guess he’s not… He’s even stronger, even more violent and aggressive. But he’s not quite as quick-minded. He can’t ask the rest of us to do things for him, or to keep an eye out for things. He’s still the leader, sure, but there are no instructions given out and we’re all acting on instinct.”

“So if I use his instinct against him?”

“You might be able to trick him…”

It was going to be risky, whatever they did. Very risky. Remus would be in wolf form for the entire thing and, from as far as Sirius could tell, he would have no control over himself and would just as readily eat Sirius as anything else. Unhelpful, but he supposed it was outweighed by the benefits of their insider knowledge.

“You think I can trick him?”

“I think the two of us working together is probably the best hope we have,” Sirius said gravely.

“Guess so…” He agreed, “I’m just hoping he doesn’t develop the ability to read minds.”

Remus might have been making the despairing joke of a man who knew he was doing something which could end his life, but that triggered something else entirely in Sirius, who looked at him fearfully.

“He can’t, can he?”

“What, Greyback? I doubt it, or he would have kicked me out for good a very long time ago…”

He relaxed a little; what were the chances of someone like _Greyback,_ someone who had never even been taught how to use a wand properly, being an advanced legilimens? And Remus was right, he might have been kicked out a while ago for his resistant views. Sirius would just have to push that concern to the back of his mind for now.

“Are you alright if I go?” He looked up, almost shy. “I can’t have him getting suspicious and I want to think this over, the only other chance I’ll get is when I’m supposed to be sleeping at night.”

Sirius had been growing more used to company, but he understood this perfectly well. “Go for it, I’ll speak to you whenever is next convenient?”

Remus nodded, getting up and heading towards the entrance of the tent. There was an awful lot to process right now, he probably couldn’t spend much more time around Black before his head exploded.

“It might not be soon,” he warned, sighing as he got himself together. This had been totally removed from anything he knew as normal, yet so much more comfortable than all of it. It had been nice to talk to someone about proper things for once. “Er, thanks for the tea…”

“Not a problem. And call me Sirius,” he smiled – a handsome, attractive look on his youthful face. He didn’t look too dissimilar from Ezra. When he wasn’t putting on this act, the man was much warmer and friendlier. It was a little alarming to come across here in the camp, but Remus could get used to it.

“Oh- Thanks, Sirius. It’s Remus,” he smiled and hurried out of the tent, feeling as though he might say something stupid if he didn’t leave now.

Sirius watched him retreat with a hint of a smile. It seemed he hadn’t been the only one who was putting on a front.

* * *

 

_It was summertime._

_There was a hand in Remus Lupin’s hair, twisting the locks around fingers, braiding it idly even though it was too short for it._

_He was warm, but not just from the weather – he was pressed up against his chest, laughing as the sun slowly sank below the horizon. They were a little way from the camp, enough to be safe as they watched the sun set on the edge of a hill, pink and orange giving the lush fields a new shade._

_Except neither of them were really watching it._

_Remus was facing the other way, so that rays of sun hit his light brown hair and made it golden. The eyes opposite him reflected the dying embers of the sun, too, his breathing slowly and more relaxed than ever._

_“Beautiful.”_

_“What?”_

_He looked over his shoulder to see sunset, but found a pair of lips by his ear and a chin on his shoulder._

_“Not that. I was talking about you, Re…”_

_The pink of his cheeks now matched the sunset. He was only about fifteen, grinning as he toyed with the boy’s dark hair._

_“I never really get to see them, there’s always too many trees where we camp.”_

_“I used to sneak off and watch them sometimes, in the old camp. It would set so early in winter up north…” He was telling a story, but seemed to have no real clue of what he was saying – his lips were making their way up Remus’s neck now, making him shiver and squirm in ways he hadn’t believed possible. “And now I guess I’m sneaking off with you instead…”_

_“You don’t mind it, do you? I just think…”_

_He trailed off, trying to focus on the feel of his neck again, but Ezra knew what he meant._

_“That it’s better Greyback doesn’t know? I understand, he’s weirdly possessive over you…”_

_“He was the one who bit me, he likes us best or something.”_

_The lips disappeared all of a sudden – Ezra had drawn back and was squinting so he could look the boy in the eye. He didn’t seem impressed, not at all._

_“He bit you?”_

_Remus felt exposed all of a sudden, worried he might have said something wrong to elicit such a change in him. He longed for the warmth of him on his skin again, but pushed forward with an answer._

_“Yeah. Is that- Are you angry?”_

_“At him. Not you, never you…”_

_There was such a genuine note in Ezra’s voice that Remus took it upon himself to lean against his chest this time, shrugging. Greyback had bitten him, but he didn’t see him that much and he_ did _provide their food and drink. At least he wasn’t dead._

_“Don’t you want to_ do _something?”_

_“Like what? Mmm…”_

_Ezra returned his lips to his neck, planting soft kisses until there were goosebumps all over his flesh. He seemed to be acting as though he was terrified of hurting Remus, but it was nice… Nobody had ever been so gentle to him, not since his parents._

_“Run away, start a new life. Pretend not to be a werewolf most of the time. Have a nice life, not one where you’re useless whenever the sun sets and all your food is cold.”_

_“Mm, sounds nice…”_

_He ducked his head, but only until Ezra nudged his chin up gently, planting a kiss on Remus’s lips. For a moment, he did nothing but return the gesture, basking in the warmth of it all and the idea of freedom._

_“I mean it…” Ezra pulled back, “I’ve thought about it before, but it would be difficult alone, hiding on the full moon and things. But if the two of us went, if we both worked jobs… We’d have enough food to eat and we’d have each other.”_

_The image was becoming clearer now – just the two of them, living somewhere together. It didn’t have to be this grand or special – it didn’t even have to be_ indoors. _But they would be away from all of this; he would never have to see the man who killed his parents again and he wouldn’t be alone. Maybe they would even make friends with other people…_

_“How would we do it?”_

_“We’d need a wand,” Ezra sighed, pushing a lock of hair behind Remus’s ear as the younger boy tugged at his shirt, pulling just enough so he could pepper kisses along his collarbone. “Well, we wouldn’t_ need _one, but it would be useful if we had to fight Greyback or something.”_

_“Greyback has a wand,” Remus hummed against his skin. It was distracting to think of someone so horrible when he was focusing on Ezra, but if it meant they could get out of here together…_

_He felt a hand slide up the back of his shirt, cool on his warm skin, lightly running fingers over where he knew there were old scars and bruises. Ezra wouldn’t care, though. He looked just the same._

_“I know, darling. But he’s dangerous.”_

_Remus wasn’t sure whether or not to tell him – it was dangerous, very dangerous. And he knew if he told Ezra, then the boy would surely try to get it for him, but it just made it seem even more as though it was the right thing to be doing._

_“He stole it from my dad…”_

_Before he could even_ see _the other’s reaction, he felt as though a weight of sorts had been lifted off his chest. Nobody on the camp knew that and it could lead to all sorts of problems. But telling Ezra, sharing another part of his life with him… It felt good. One day they might even be living together with his father’s wand._

_The older boy tightened his grip on the boy in his lap, looking at him with more ease now the sun was below the horizon._

_“He stole it?! Remus, I’m getting you that wand back, it’s not his.”_

_“Don’t…” He implored, though it wasn’t entirely convincing. “At least not without planning, it’s not safe.”_

_“We’re going to get out of here before the next full moon, wand and all. You want that, don’t you?”_

_He nodded. He wanted to get out more than anything in the world. He wanted that wand more than anything in the world. Right now, he wanted_ Ezra _more than anything in the world…_

_“Please…” He struggled with Ezra’s shirt for a minute, sliding it over his head so only his bare chest was on his display – it had slightly more scars than his own, the marks of fights that Remus had so carefully avoided his time on the camp. But it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter who they had to fight and if they were going to get out._

_Ezra laughed and hurried to reciprocate, tossing Remus’s shirt into the long grass several feet beyond. He wouldn’t be needing that – or the rest of their clothes. Not for a little while yet._

* * *

 

“Get off me!”

The shout brought Remus back to reality – groggily, he looked up to find he had stretched lazily until his feet were on someone’s side. For a moment, he’d been truly comfortable, transported back to happier times in a dream.

But reality was doing a good job of reminding him that he slept in a cave with several other men, none of whom wanted to make him feel as though he was worth something.

“Sorry…”

Admitting defeat on holding onto the last vestiges of the dream, he gave up on sleep and forced himself upright, watching the cave for a few moments. The sun had risen but most were still asleep, probably hungover from whatever had been going on the night before. Remus, claiming to have a headache, had gone to bed early enough to be waking up now.

“Lupin, I need you.”

So there was _one_ person awake – and it just happened to be his favourite of all.

“What for?”

He splashed water onto his face from a basin at the edge of the cave, waking himself up to speak to Greyback.

“I’ve found a location for us to move to. Check it’s okay and we’ll move today if so. I like it.”

They moved so quickly sometimes, but it was nothing Remus wasn’t used to. Even when he still had his parents he was used to it, moving house on the spur of the moment every few months so that nobody would suspect what he was.

“Is there a portkey?”

“In a minute. I want breakfast. Hungry?”

Remus turned his attention to the dead rabbit at the end of Greyback’s bed – he’d clearly prepared breakfast the night before. Compared to most things, it wasn’t unappetising.

“Mm, sure. Where exactly is this place?”

He wasn’t trying to get information out of Greyback. He didn’t really care that much, but if he was going to be betraying him secretly, then slowly climbing a little further back into Greyback’s books might not do much harm. Too much flattery and it would arouse suspicion, but he had decided himself that he was going to have to get close enough to convince Greyback he had decided to give up on his resentment of the Death Eater.

“Further south,” he grunted through a mouthful of meat, “quite far.”

South was good – it was only going to get colder and wetter for the rest of the year now, and Remus’s hopes weren’t too high for those Greyback didn’t allow to sleep inside. He’d tried to argue against that in the past, but this man had a way of winning these things.

Offering only a nod in response, he tucked into his breakfast and wondered what Sirius was eating. What did he enjoy when he was a boy? Toast. And jam. And scrambled eggs…

It didn’t happen often, but sometimes he just missed those things. He was lucky, really, that there were enough things to eat here. There were even berries and things in the summer. But they’d once broken into a house in which someone had just made a hot chocolate and he’d pined for a few days.

But rabbit was fine. More than fine.

It didn’t take them long to eat. Greyback was quick to get up without bothering to clear up the remains of the rabbit – someone else would do that – and pull Remus outside to the portkey. It turned out to be just a crumpled leaf – there wasn’t really _much_ out here that they could use as a portkey, meaning there had been several past incidents of people running around after the portkey when it had just been blown away.

Moments later and he was standing in a field. The air around them was cooler right now, the rain more drizzly than it had been in the past, but it seemed not to be terrible. The view, in fact, reminded him of the dream he had last night. They might even be close to that place, for all he knew, but Remus had lost track of where they had moved – he had done even when he lived with his parents.

“What do you think?”

They had walked through another field into a clearing now. It was bigger than their current one, but less well-hidden.

“Bit exposed, isn’t it? People might find us?” He wondered aloud, worrying more about people who might find them than what would happen to them if they were found.

“Walk over there, through those trees.” Greyback smirked. He was exercising an odd amount of restraint with Remus at the moment, as though standing back to work out exactly where the man stood.

Remus wandered a little further through the trees, until they became sparser, until he could feel the wind on his face and the grass below his feet started to feel shorter.

“Ah…”

He had reached where he was supposed to be – one side of the forest would lead them only to a cliff-top – a wild cliff-top where he supposed few people would walk. The walk from the forest to the cliff had been a steep uphill one, too.

“Might get weather coming in from the sea…” He suggested, not entirely sure if that would be the case, but not wanting Greyback to blame him if it did happen. “It is further downhill, though. Are there caves?”

“Probably. Can make some if there aren’t, we’ve got a steep hill in front of us.”

“Yeah… I guess it would probably work here,” he shrugged, wrapping his arms around himself and staring at the sea below. It was rather calming to watch. Yet it wouldn’t be so good if one of the kids found it and decided to run too far over the cliff…

Or if Greyback chased them.

“Have you been talking to Black?”

Remus froze – he’d been still anyway, but now he was rooted to the spot. Did Greyback somehow _know?_ He had to play it cool, turning around blankly.

“I have spoken to him, yes.”

The man’s twisted smile was back, which came as a relief for the first time ever.

“He converting you to the cause? I thought that the punishment would be enough. But whatever it takes…”

“I guess…” Remus said heavily, starting to walk again so he didn’t have to look Greyback in the eye with his lying, lying face. “I guess it’s not really very different from what we do the rest of the time anyway. So… As long as he doesn’t try to bring about huge changes,” he dug his hands into his pockets and scuffed the ground with his foot. “Whatever. Doesn’t mean I like him…”

He’d acted his part well enough, it seemed, because Greyback looked fairly satisfied and carried on down the hill with him.

“There’ll be fish to eat too, probably, if we’re near the sea.”

That was a slight change. He wondered whether Sirius would like this new camp, trying to see the move from the perspective of someone who had never done so before. Really, he probably wouldn’t _care._ But Remus quite liked the idea of being so close to the sea, even if it would be stormy and cold in winter. It was a reminder that there was something else out there.

They didn’t stay much longer after that. Greyback experimented with his wand and the creation of some caves (there weren’t any on this side of the cliff) and Remus poked around for signs of things they might be able to eat this winter, deciding that it wasn’t too poor a supply.

Winter was always hard and if Greyback had chosen somewhere so far south – as far south as the _coast,_ it probably meant they would be spending the whole time there. What _he_ was curious about now was how long Black would be with them. How long _he_ would still be with them…

Maybe one day he would be able to live somewhere like this without being a part of Greyback’s regime.

* * *

 

“Lupin, is that you?”

Sirius, careful to keep his persona intact until the person behind the door answered, hurriedly tidied up the tent. If it _was_ Remus, he would understand the need for it all.

And it wasn’t long before he was satisfied – the man hurried into the tent to see Sirius rest his wand easily on the table, secure in the knowledge that he wasn’t going to hurt him.

“Hi,” he was panting slightly, but that wasn’t what he noticed first.

Remus looked… Well, awful. There were bags under his eyes and his skin seemed to be stretched over his face, as though he wasn’t eating enough. Sirius was on the verge of thinking something terrible had happened, offering his spare chair to Remus, when the man sat down and entered into the most trivial of conversations.

“Are you off soon?”

“I- Well, yes. In a few hours. Are you _okay?”_

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You look…” He gestured generally in the direction of Remus’s face.

“It’s full moon,” he said simply, “I’m just tired.”

“Greyback didn’t seem tired earlier today,” he said darkly. He had spoken to the man about where he would join them next and the man had been cockier and yet more fierce than ever. “He seemed the opposite of tired.”

“Greyback isn’t trying to fight it off.” He was matter-of-fact, running a hand through his hair and yawning quietly. “He… Embraces it, I guess. I don’t want to give it the satisfaction. Anyway, are things ready for tonight?”

“Yeah,” Sirius sighed. “Though Dumbledore is being incredibly secretive about this plan. I think he’s worried about people overhearing me, after what happened with you. Don’t look apologetic!” He smiled hastily, “but it would be both of us on the line if it did happen. He said it would be safe.”

“Good,” Remus shuddered. Sirius wasn’t a part of this in the way he was – he didn’t have the danger of hurting someone when he couldn’t even help it. “But Fenrir won’t be fun when it’s over.”

“I can imagine,” Sirius said sympathetically, which caused Remus to look at him oddly, as though he was unused to someone talking to him in that tone. “You’ll be safe, won’t you? If he might actually do you serious harm, we can get you out of here.”

Remus smiled wryly – Sirius knew a lot more than him about many, many things, but clearly not about how the full moon worked.

“I think it can’t be worse than the transformation, I’ll be fine.”

Sirius wavered for a moment, on the edge of asking what that was _like._ He had no idea how people who looked perfectly normal suddenly became beasts except for the transitions of animagi, but he’d heard turning into a wolf was a lot more painful than that.

Remus seemed to read his mind, though, for he had smiled a little and shook his head in Sirius’s direction.

“You don’t want to know what that’s like, honestly. Are you…” He made a stab at changing the subject, feeling a little awkward talking about the full moon to this man, a man who clearly wasn’t a huge fan of werewolves, “are you going anywhere in particular tonight?”

Sirius _was_ going somewhere in particular, and it was somewhere far much nicer than he imagined Remus was going. Expression turning much lighter in an instant, he nodded eagerly.

“Yeah, seeing my brother, James. We’ve not seen each other for ages since I’ve been here… I miss him…”

“I thought you said your family were all evil?” Remus asked shrewdly.

“Not my real brother. Best friend, I guess you might say… We met at Hogwarts and his family took me in when I left home,” he glanced down at the mirror on the table, which was currently blank. Figuring Lupin probably didn’t want to see how ill he looked, he quietly moved it towards himself. “He’s fantastic.”

“He sounds it,” Remus smiled. He’d never had a brother, and not a best friend who lasted more than a few weeks… But there were bigger concerns right now, things he had to focus on. “You’ve heard that we’re going to the new place after the full moon?”

“Yeah. Nice sea air, you told me. Sounds freezing, if you ask me.”

His smile faltered for a moment – _he_ got to sleep in a magically heated tent and have warm food every night. He had considered asking Remus if he wanted to sleep on the sofa, but it would have aroused too much suspicion. He couldn’t help but feel _bad,_ though – they were both the same age, both wizards, and only one of them would be sleeping in the warmth and getting enough to eat.

“It’s fine, it won’t snow or anything if we’re by the sea.”

He wasn’t smiling, but Sirius was fairly sure that it was this ability to see the slightly brighter side of things that kept Remus going through all of Greyback’s rubbish. He would have crumbled before being there even a few weeks, he knew it.

“Better than up north, right? Someone told me once that there were werewolf packs in Scotland.”

“They’ve disbanded now,” Remus said quietly.

“Oh? Do you have outside contacts?” He was curious to know, because it could mean contacting them himself for more support.

“No… One joined our camp when they disbanded.”

“Who?” He sat up a little straighter – any kind of internal contacts and links to other werewolves might be of some use to them – in fact, he was surprised that Remus had neglected to mention it before.

“He’s dead now.” Remus said, an oddly closed look on his face which made Sirius feel as though he had pried far too much and had done something wrong. “I should go, Greyback will be suspicious.”

He got up and headed to the entrance of the tent before Sirius could even formulate a response to him, but he managed to before he left completely, feeling guilt wallow in his stomach for asking so much. Whoever this dead man was, Remus hadn’t been untouched by his influence in the camp, that was for sure.

“Good luck,” he said, far softer than Remus had ever heard him before, “I’ll see you at the new place.”

With a swallow and a nod, Remus pushed the door open and stepped back out into the clearing, leaving Sirius wondering just how someone his own age went through _that_ every month and didn’t fall apart.

* * *

 

 It had been a long, long time since Greyback had undergone a totally victimless full moon. And he had been expecting this one to be a certain – biting the child on a Ministry wizard who worked in any old department, it should have been easy.

But for whatever reason, it wasn’t. They’d been ambushed, attacked. The child’s door had been left open and her parents had heard far too soon, the pair of them fighting off around ten werewolves with magic they’d never seen the likes of.

Bloody, snarling and hungry, they had prowled for the rest of the night, but unsuccessfully. They’d caught nothing more than a few _deer,_ fought a bit and howled at the moon – which probably made most people far more wary of them than they wanted.

As a wolf, aggression would only come out in the snaps and snarls, but Fenrir was an aggressive man and wasn’t _just_ going to take it out on their wolf forms. Remus was only too aware of that fact.

Groaning, naked and bloody, he realised he was lying on the forest floor without any clothes and in a _lot_ of pain. More than usual, even. They’d made their way back to the camp by its scent, but the portkey to the new place would be leaving very soon, from the look of it. People were crowding around something he could not see, squabbling over clothes in the meantime.

If he was lucky, he’d find something when they arrived. For now, he settled on a blanket thrown carelessly to his side, snatching it with his hand to wrap around his waist and crawl to the portkey with, feeling blood trickle out of his wounds rather too persistently for his liking.

He felt the familiar jerk behind the navel.

It was uncomfortable, but nowhere near as much as the next few hours were going to be.

The world span and people shouted; all he wanted was to collapse back onto the ground and sleep, but as he hit the solid surface of their new location, it was clear that would not happen for some time.

“ _Again!”_ Greyback was snarling, reeling. Remus had never seen him angrier – people were cowering in fear at the sight of the man, Remus included. Desperately trying to keep his head down, he scanned the new clearing until catching sight of a tent in a far corner, flapping a little in the cold air.

“You have failed me _again!”_ He shouted. “All of you! This was _supposed to be a success.”_

He stormed around, aiming a heavy kick at the closest person – Remus wasn’t the only one to wince at the mere sight of it.

“Put on some clothes,” he snarled, “and then we’ll see who’s _worthy_ of remaining.”

As the man moved towards the cave he had made for himself, several people looked as though they wanted to flee, scrabbling for the remaining items of clothing and pulling them on. Remus felt similar enough, wishing he could just run _anywhere_ as he struggled into a pair of trousers, ignoring the pain.

But Greyback played things cleverly – they were somewhere completely new with no way of escape. If they ran in one direction, they would meet only a cliff and then the vast expanse of sea. Having to turn around and come back could be no less fatal than the drop.

Most of them were too scared to move, too – too scared and in too much pain, huddling together in wait of his return.

If they’d thought now, if they’d banded together, they could have made a force to oppose him and overturn him. But nobody did that. The only thing worse than Greyback would be letting somebody else have a go at handling power; it would mean starting all over again and it would be _messy._

“Finally.”

He was bloody and shaking with rage, staring at the other werewolves with a look of utter disgust.

“Who- Which _coward_ slowed us down?” He hissed. “Which _idiot_ led us away after we’d tried once?!”

None of them knew, and none of them could have helped it if they had wanted. Remus slipped back into the shadows as best as possible, hoping not to break the unstable rapport he had built with the man in these past few days.

“ _You. Here.”_

He didn’t dare look up, but when he finally did, it was relief which he felt. Relief until there was a crushing sense of horror. A kid, just a _child_ stumbling towards Greyback… He hadn’t even _been_ there.

“You’re always whining,” he snarled, raising a hand to the child’s neck and gripping tightly, “I’ll give you something to whine about-”

“ _NO!”_

Remus had jumped before he’d even realised what his legs were doing, leaping at the man and knocking him away from the child. He wasn’t as strong as Greyback, he knew that, but he could hope to hold him off a little while at least.

“He wasn’t even _there,”_ he hissed.

There was a terrible kind of glint in Greyback’s eye, but he let Remus continue.

“He couldn’t have fucked it up,” Remus continued, struggling against the man’s grip. “Choosing him is- It’s _cowardice.”_

“You might not be a coward Lupin.” He growled, flipping them over so Remus was on the ground, his back on cold earth and Greyback’s terrible face blocking the sunlight. “But you are _stupid.”_ He hissed, leaning further down over him, until his teeth were pressed against the writhing man’s neck and his fist was raised over his head. “If you think you’re going to get away from _this.”_

“Get _off!”_ Remus gasped, crying out as the teeth dug into his neck _hard,_ their purpose nothing more than to draw blood, to weaken him until he was a mess, ready to submit to Greyback again.

“ _Quiet.”_

He spat warm blood onto his neck, but Remus knew he wasn’t even close to being done yet.

Finding strength only in his legs, Remus kicked at the figure above him, desperate to find even one point of weakness which could turn the tables. But others were closing in now, Greyback’s closest men ready to support him, to grip his ankles so Greyback could work faster.

And when six other men raised their fists and got to work, he knew there was no hope of winning.

The last thing Remus saw was the fist inches from his face.

* * *

 

And then-

This wasn’t right.

This wasn’t the camp. This was- Bright, glowing. _Indoors._

He ached too much to consider moving, eyes given little choice but to stare groggily up at a blurry ceiling and a corner of a window. This had to be some kind of dream. Unless he was dead? _Was_ he dead?

Surely if he was, his head wouldn’t be hurting quite so much.

And if he was, why would someone be knocking on a door? Why would it be swinging open to reveal someone he couldn’t see?

He was probably hallucinating.

He flinched convulsively. What if this was still Greyback?

But…

Greyback wouldn’t be pressing something cold to his forehead, or mopping blood off his lip.

Remus groaned painfully, trying to turn away, but a voice caught him before he had managed to.

“Shhh…” It was saying, “You’re safe. Try to sleep.”

And unless he was very much mistaken, it was the voice of Sirius Black.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's taken so long! I'm still on track with my writing of this fic, but my editing is a bit behind. If anyone would like to write an essay on the appeal of 12th century European heresy for me, it would speed things up...  
> Thanks for all the kudos and kind things people are commenting on this <3 Here's some hurt/comfort for you

The moon was low in the sky and dawn was creeping closer when Sirius arrived back at the campsite, but the werewolves had not yet arrived. They would be relying on a portkey once back in human form, giving Sirius the chance to set up his tent and rest before returning to his role as spy.

And he needed the rest. His one night off a month had been given the only suitable purpose, one involving James Potter and a lot of alcohol – he had laughed more than he’d done in weeks, but as the night wore off and the hangover settled in, Sirius had found himself wishing for an extra day to recuperate.

They had barely talked about his mission at all.

It had been wonderful. Wonderful just to get away from it for a while.

Even if it did give him a pounding headache.

It was only after several strong potions that Sirius managed to set up his tent and collapse into bed, but even then, he was nowhere near as worst for wear as the rest were going to be this morning. He’d been unsure of what to expect until Remus had told him they would be exhausted and bloody as they always were, but also worryingly angry from the failure of the night before.

As the potions worked through him, Sirius waited for the sound of a portkey, hearing only the distant rush of the sea and the cries of gulls on the clifftop.

Eventually he came to wonder whether they had simply arrived in utter silence – at least until the clearing was filled with a great noise, one which suggested either the werewolves had arrived, or he was about to be stampeded by a herd of elephants.

Curious and wary, he shifted to the edge of the tent to hear tones of anger, shouts and grunts…

It wasn’t hard to tell that Greyback was unimpressed by what had happened – the voices were becoming louder and more aggressive until…

“Shit…”

He’d winced himself as the sounds of fighting drifted through the canvas walls; he had expected anger, but not this…

Worried to know the extent of it, he hurried to the doorway and peered from between the flaps. Greyback was on top of someone, someone struggling feebly as other men surrounded him, a scene which caused him to scan the group of men worriedly for Remus, perhaps lurking in a corner or pulling children away from the fight.

But Sirius knew well where the man was.

And _he_ was in here, just doing nothing…

Perhaps they would stop. Perhaps they would leave him alone in a minute and Sirius wouldn’t have to risk their anger himself.

“ _Quiet.”_

Greyback’s shout reverberated around the clearing, louder than anything else. Men were snarling, rounding on the still figure. Remus was motionless.

Lifeless.

The huge man reached to pummel him harder and harder with his fists…

“STOP!”

Sirius had run out of the tent without thinking, wand raised and voice louder than he thought possible, a voice he’d only used before at Quidditch matches. Even then, it took two more yells for them to stop, drawing back to stare at him.

Remus was unconscious at best, covered in blood and bruises – and worse, completely defenceless against whatever they had been doing. It took a lot of effort not to run forward and ensure he was breathing, but that could have ruined everything.

“What happened?” He hissed, wand trained on Greyback. That man wouldn’t be trying _anything_ on him.

Greyback had the unmistakably look of someone who had been thoroughly cornered, giving Sirius a sense of immense satisfaction.

“He escaped,” he growled, planting a kick in Lupin’s side for good measure.

Sirius forced himself to pretend he didn’t know those words were coming – hoping that being stunned into silence was convincing, he stared wordlessly around the figures, desperately planning what to do.

Eventually, he stormed over to Remus, staring down at him with a mask of utter contempt.

“Given you’ve already started on this one, I’ll finish him off,” he snarled, waving his wand to levitate the man in the air. “You’ll be next, Greyback. I’ll make sure you get seen by the Dark Lord himself,” Sirius hissed. “Do not even _think_ of leaving this place, because we _will_ find you.”

Remus’s bloody body floated above the ground in the direction of Sirius’s tent, clumsily moving in through the canvas flaps. Sirius followed at a painfully slow pace, though all changed when the doors zipped shut.

“Shit. _Shit. Fuck-“_ He stared down at the unconscious figure, pressing two fingers to his bloody neck in search of a pulse. For all he knew, they had been close to killing him…

“Yes…” A sigh of relief escaped him, though barely – Remus was alive, but if Sirius didn’t act fast, he might not stay that way. And though he barely had any training in healing, he might be able to do enough to bring him back from this.

All he could do now was hope that Greyback and the others would not hear him apparating from inside the tent. They needed to get away from here, and fast.

Sirius had not expected to be back so soon.

His flat was exactly as he had left it – messy and still strangely empty since James had left to move in with Lily.

He had returned, of course, last night – and had been both delighted and relieved to see it. But the mood this time was very different. He was clinging to his chest a bloody and unconscious man who was a good few inches taller than him and heavier than he looked – something Sirius attributed to him having a fair amount of muscle on his body.

He grunted and groaned as he moved him onto the spare bed, knowing there was no time to waste trying to get him comfortable.

Sirius could only count himself lucky that Lily had thought to restock his medicine cabinet recently – he’d not had a chance to contact Dumbledore yet and speaking to anyone else would require too much explanation.

He had thought of Lily, but she was on a mission for the Order, far too far away to come and help him heal a werewolf.

Remus’s black eyes were the least of his worries – for what felt like hours, he worked to staunch the flow of blood, to bandage things he knew would need someone more experienced to heal and to ensure there were no hidden wounds which might prove fatal.

All the while, all he could wonder was whether this had all been his fault.

Should he have come out earlier? Should he have been quicker to get Remus home? Would it be _his_ fault if he died?

Surely not.

It was Greyback and the others who had done this. There were marks on Remus’s neck to suggest it had been squeezed hard, painfully so. His collarbone and shoulders were covered in deep bites from human teeth which seemed to suggest Greyback had wanted to tear out chunks of flesh.

Trying not to gag and retch from the mere sight, Sirius rubbed potions into the wounds and kept checking for a pulse as he fed him a blood-replenishing potion. Remus remained unconscious, pale and cold to the touch. But his pulse was a lot steadier.

He worked until it seemed safe to put a blanket over him and switch off the light to give him some peace, a glass of water and a painkilling potion beside the bed in case he woke in a fit of agony.

As he exited the room, Sirius’s hands were shaking and bloody. But there was no time for a break,  not for anything longer than to rinse the blood from his hands before heading towards the fireplace. The mirror was still in his tent, but he had plenty of ways of contacting Albus Dumbledore about this…

* * *

 

Cold.

It was the cold Remus felt before the pain.

Cold like ice, right over his eye. His lashes felt wet, though maybe that was from blood… Was there blood there? He tried to think, but that hurt so much too and it cost too much energy, energy he needed just to stay awake and work out what was going on.

The voice telling him to go back to sleep had fallen silent and he was fighting to understand this, hoarsely piecing together a few words.

“Where- Where am I?”

There was a soft, concerned sigh and the blurry figure above him switched the ice to his other eye, so his vision was blurry and wet. But it did look like Sirius.

“Greyback attacked you, Remus,” he said tentatively, as though scared of saying it. “You were unconscious and he was attacking you, along with about eight of them. I needed to get you out of there.”

He groaned feebly and attempted to shake his head, trying to tell Sirius he hadn’t needed saving, that it was a waste of time and that he had been through worse before.

From the look on Sirius’s face, none of that message was conveyed successfully. Black removed the ice and pulled a chair up to his side.

“You’re not going anywhere until you’re well. Go back to sleep, unless you’d like some water?”

This time, he did manage a nod, feeling slightly ashamed as the man held a glass to his lips and he sipped thirstily, as though fearing it would be taken away from him.

As his eyes started to focus a little more, he found himself meeting Sirius’s face. The man looked far whiter and more tired than he had ever seen him before. It was hardly a good sign.

“How long-?”

“Couple of days,” he mumbled worriedly, “I had to contact Dumbledore and he said some of it would just be exhaustion after the full moon, but you got beaten up pretty badly.”

If he was honest, Remus felt like he had too. Even a couple of days later, he felt drained and nervous to move.

“This is my flat,” Sirius began, arranging a blanket over him. Any other time, he might have stopped to appreciate the fact he was on a bed, but he would have felt no different lying on the floor right now. “It’s totally safe, you can’t be found here. Someone might come to help you with your injuries when you can stay awake a bit longer, but I wanted to warn you before they did…”

He was relieved to hear he’d _waited_ to get someone to heal him, but still shook his head – he hadn’t seen a healer for years and wasn’t planning on seeing one now. But Sirius just sighed, looking unsurprised.

“We’ll talk about this another time, just focus on getting better now.” He placed the glass on the table beside his bed and refilled it with a flick of his wand.

Remus remained still, closing his eyes again as his breathing slowed. The pain wasn’t much better, but there was a lot to be gained from the knowledge that this was the worst it was going to be for a while. Sirius had clearly done a lot of magic to stop him from getting worse and he was grateful, if too exhausted to focus on it properly.

For now, he just needed to sleep.

* * *

 

“Where is he?”

Lily Evans was standing on the doorstep of his flat, her arm around James Potter, who looked more tired than he should have done – and not just because of the hangover.

“In the spare room,” Sirius ushered them in, hugging both as they kicked off their shoes and settled down comfortably. “He’s asleep. Do you want a beer?”

“On it,” James had grinned and gone to fetch them before Sirius had even opened the kitchen door, clearly not regretting the hangover _that_ much.

Lily, meanwhile, had turned her attention to the door of the spare room as though trying to see through the wood.

“Was it Dumbledore’s plan?”

Sirius laughed and shook his head – Dumbledore’s plan would have involved a designated safe house and Madam Pomfrey.

“Definitely not, but don’t you think it’s better to have him here than with strangers? He has just been attacked.” He took a seat in the middle of the sofa so they would have to pay him some attention. “Attacked and a werewolf, some healers would probably try to poison him deliberately.”

“Whereas you would only do it by accident,” Lily said sweetly, patting his arm and accepting a beer from James. “You’re not making potions for him, are you? Just buying them?”

“Of course. Poor sod doesn’t want to go near anything I cook up.”

“More money than sense, that’s what they mean,” James said fondly, taking a swig from his drink and turning to face the spare room. “Dumbledore said you ran into the middle of the fight and pulled him away from _Fenrir Greyback?”_

“Something like that…” He took a long drink, smiling at the familiarity and comfort of being back home, even if he did feel a little guilty for it, because Remus Lupin was in considerably less comfort right now than he had probably ever been. “It was a bad fight, eight of them on him. _Really_ testing my abilities as a healer.”

“If he’s still alive now, then you’re getting better at it, Padfoot,” James kicked his shin with a smirk, “just don’t try and get him back onto food with your own cooking.”

Sirius turned to face James, feigning deep offense.

“What are you saying, Potter?”

“Oh, just that if you make anything more complex than toast that he might wish he wasn’t here at all. That time you tried to make curry… Slow and painful death,” he grinned. “I was on the loo for da-”

“Jesus, _don’t,”_ Lily groaned, hopping off the sofa to whack her boyfriend with a cushion, only to give Sirius the same treatment.

“Well, what _do_ I feed him? He’ll be sick of toast in days.”

“What does he eat?”

“They eat a lot of meat, but I doubt it’s all they _can_ eat, I’ve seen him eating apples and stuff.”

“Give him whatever’s left of your rations,” Lily said sensibly, “the Prewetts’ sister made those and she’s managed to raise her kids without poisoning them.”

“It’s either that or a kebab, mate,” James grinned at the look of indignation on Sirius’s face at the thought of having to go back to the tent and the clearing just to reclaim some home-cooked stews. “Or a house elf.”

“I’ll end up looking like my parents, thanks. And he probably thinks I’m enough of a snob anyway.” He laughed, though couldn’t hide his shudder at the thought of becoming like them, house elf and everything.

Lily grinned and took a long drink from her bottle. “How deeply asleep is he anyway? Might we wake him?”

“Doubt it. He woke when I literally put ice on his face, but he was pretty sleepy. And there are only three of us-”

“And none of us are as loud as Pettigrew,” James grinned.

“Where is Wormtail anyway?”

“Busy, Order stuff probably. Not sure why he’s getting _all_ the missions. Reckon they maybe give more to single people,” he raised his eyebrows.

“But if that’s the case, then why does one of us always have one at any given time?” Lily sighed, “It’s like whoever made the rota hates romance. Or fun.”

“May-Eye, definitely,” Sirius smirked. “Stopping the two of you from getting up to no good in the daytime, I reckon. Have you ever actually been put on a mission together?”

Lily and James exchanged a look somewhere between pride and embarrassment. He was the one to answer.

“Once.”

_“Oh?”_

“Apparently we’re not meant to kiss during missions, just in case it gives a Death Eater an advantage.”

“You two are still _teenagers,_ honestly,” Sirius smirked. “I’d have expected better from you.”

“It was a _very_ fruitless mission,” Lily sighed, “we were just unlucky that he showed up to check on us right as James was sticking his tongue in my mouth.” Her eyes twinkled. “But I’m sure you’re very bored hearing about us.” She lowered her voice, sounding curious. “Have you seen anyone recently?”

“Yeah, actually. I’m dating a werewolf, as a matter of fact. They were all _jumping_ for their chance and I got a pick of the lot.”

James laughed, but Lily looked less amused.

“It’s lonely, isn’t it?”

He shrugged – all three of them knew it was very lonely, and two of them felt quite guilty that whatever they did, they could come home to each other every night. Sirius, on the other hand, would be lonely and cold in a tent somewhere, surrounded by people who were a threat to him.

“Have you spoken to him much? The guy on our side?”

“He’s a bit too unconscious for that,” he smiled wryly.

“Fair,” James straightened up, “how is he when he _is_ conscious? I’ve never met a werewolf, is he kind of… Wild?”

His eyes were alight, the expression of someone whose knowledge of werewolves came only from childhood stories whispered in the dark. But Sirius had met them and knew they were somehow both better and worse than that.

“He was grumpy at first,” he yawned, running a hand through his hair. “But once he realised we weren’t out to kill him, he was a bit more open to conversation. I think it’s all just a bit new, not having to worry about what he says like he has to with Greyback.”

“Is he coming to any of the meetings?”

Lily had been adamant that not all werewolves were bad from the offset – if Dumbledore believed Sirius had a chance of converting some, then they had to have a human nature. And she knew only too well about the prejudices wizarding society held – it was _her_ response which had given Sirius the confidence to go on his mission in the first place. Without her, he wouldn’t have gone near a werewolf, largely for fear of being bitten.

“I’ll ask him, but I don’t think he’ll want to.”

“Oh?”

“He knows too well what most people think of him,” Sirius glanced at the door anxiously, but Remus was in a deep sleep right now and he didn’t need to worry. He’d check on him before going to bed, but it was unlikely that he’d need anything. Most of the time he looked quite peaceful, if one could look past the wounds. “And he knows I trust him and Dumbledore does, but I can’t speak for everyone in the Order. Some people might have reservations.”

Lily scowled with such force that Sirius wondered how James coped when she was angry with him.

“You can tell him I’m happy to meet him, in case he wants to meet another person who’s fed up of what society’s saying about him.”

James grinned, though there was a sadness behind his eyes and a kind of concern in the way he put his hand on Lily’s arm.

The offer might have been more of a way of protest than a real offer, but Sirius was grateful for all he could take.

“You know, he might want to meet a smaller group before having to face an entire meeting. You could both come round of something… I think he’s probably not used to being around normal wizards and is worried about fucking it up…”

“Ah,” Lily said softly, leaning back and yawning, “neither are you are going to be any help, then.” She grinned, “You both fucked up being normal _years_ ago.”

* * *

Seeing James and Lily again raised Sirius’s spirits more than he could have imagined. That night, after wishing them goodbye, he checked on Remus (who was still asleep) and went to bed with a new spring in his step, falling under the covers and dozing off almost immediately.

It was only the third night he had actually spent back in this bed, this wonderful bed which helped him sleep better than he had done in the entire time with the werewolves.

And he slept soundly, too, for what felt like a long time, warm and safe in the knowledge he wasn’t around Greyback.

Only a month ago, he would have been terrified at the prospect of sleeping only one room away from an actual, real-life werewolf. But right now, he felt as comfortable as anything, in a deep stage of sleep until there was a distinct _thump_ from the room next door.

He bolted upright.

It was fine, probably. Remus had likely knocked his glass of water over – though it did sound much _louder_ than that. Given how ill he was, he figured he had better go and check.

He knocked first, patting down his messy bedhead and shivering in the t-shirt and boxers he was wearing.

“Remus? Are you awake? Everything okay in there?”

He didn’t really expect a response, but the one which came was even sooner than predicted.

“I’m okay, I’m fine…”

“Can I come in?”

There was a longer pause now, filled with the sound of hasty movement, but Remus told him to enter a moment later and Sirius walked in to find everything looking rather _normal,_ though Remus was sitting upright on the bed, rather sheepish.

“I thought- Are you okay?”

He looked nervous and was glancing around the room as though he’d never seen it properly.

“Yeah. I- Um, I fell out of bed and it woke me up.”

Sirius had to bite back a grin – not only was it amusing, but it was a good sign if Remus was moving around in his sleep and capable of waking up easily, not to mention sitting upright on a bed and talking to him.

“Are you hurt?”

“Yes, but more from the other thing.”

The werewolf gestured generally to himself, to the bruises and cuts on his body not entirely hidden by Sirius’s bandaging.

A smile flickered across his face and Sirius blinked – was he making jokes now? Did they make jokes now? Maybe Remus just felt that much safer here.

“I- Fair point,” he smiled apologetically, “don’t move too much, though, because my healing is shoddy at best and you’ve not eaten for a couple of days. You were really ill…” His expression softened.

“I’m okay,” Remus said bracingly, “it wasn’t just the attack, it was the full moon too, I’m always tired after that.”

Sirius had been about to say that it didn’t really make it any better, but he didn’t want to put a downer on things now, because Remus looked fairly cheerful, vulnerable but comfortable as he glanced around the room. This time _he_ was the one being thrown in at the deep end.

“Are you hungry? Thirsty?”

Sirius assumed nobody had looked after Remus like this for a long time and it was probably slightly odd. The man toyed with the bedding for a moment.

“Please could I just have some water?”

“Come on, you’ve got to be hungry. You can just ask.”

Remus relaxed a little more, clearly having feared overstepping his welcome – but Sirius was intent on giving him more than just water.

“Some fruit or something?”

He sighed – this was going to be a long and uphill battle, but he’d do it if it meant Remus would get better. He might just have to learn to make something slightly more nourishing than toast.

“You can start with fruit, if you want,” he smiled, tapping the glass with his wand to refill it with water and watching Remus pick it up with both hands and drink it quickly. He already looked better. “And I guess at some point we should talk about what happened. We already have, but you were a bit out of it…”

Remus nodded, staying in position on the bed in a way which made him look younger and more innocent than he probably should have done, though only because he was rather clueless of how to act somewhere like this.

“Is there anything else I can get you right now? Just ask if you’re not sure. Anything at all?”

This time, the man actually seemed to consider the question, but still responded with a shake of the head, either too shy or too easily satisfied. Either way, Sirius had expected nothing more.

Yet he still smiled as he stood up and headed towards the kitchen to prepare a kind of breakfast for the shy, injured and very much awake werewolf who seemed to have become his very own housemate.

Remus was feeling a lot of things for somebody who had been unconscious only a few hours ago. True, falling off the bed had been a rather rude awakening for him to the day, but it had done a good job of waking him up.

He was still tired, but that was nothing new – and though every part of him ached, it wasn’t his main focus right now. He had woken to find himself in Sirius’s house, tucked up in bed and having been healed far more than he had since his parents had been alive.

And then Sirius had come into the room and offered him food and anything he wanted. Right now, he couldn’t even work out what he needed – and it had been many years since he’d been able to think deeply about what he wanted. He was human, it would surely come in time, but Sirius’s offer was a little overwhelming right now.

Taking it slowly, he tried to focus on the room. It was quite messy, full of boxes and items of clothing, but it didn’t look like a room someone used regularly, though bright and warm and good-smelling.

“I’ve got you fruit and tea, because I boiled too much water for just me.”

Sirius appeared at the door with a grin, a mug and a bowl of chopped fruit for Remus. He’d made more of an effort to dress now, too, having changed his nightclothes into a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. Something growled in Remus’s stomach, but it didn’t seem to be about hunger.

“Thanks,” he didn’t believe him, but accepted them both and took a drink of tea with a sigh – he’d been given more cups by Sirius in the past few days than he had in the past year.

Sirius settled on a chair in the corner and watched him.

“Why was there a fight?”

Remus, who had abanonded the fork in the bowl and was eating with his rather dirty hand, looked up.

“Because the full moon failed. He started on a kid who hadn’t even been there and I wasn’t having that.”

“He really has it in for you, doesn’t he?”

“Mm. I don’t know how I’m going to get round it when I go back.”

Sirius’s eyes widened and he shook his head vigorously, so much so that Remus wondered if he had offended him.

“You’re not going _back.”_

“What?”

“He nearly killed you!”

“He bit me, it’s not the first thing he’s done!”

“If you’re part of the Order, then we’re going to protect you. Would you let me go back if he’d attacked me?”

“That’s totally different!” Remus had raised his voice, though still sounded weak and tired – maybe they shouldn’t be having this argument just yet.

“Surely you don’t _want_ to go back?”

“No, but I don’t really have anywhere else to go.”

“Then you can live here!”

Sirius said it with such conviction, so genuinely that Remus almost fell of the bed again with a surge of relief and gratitude. He almost smiled, but hesitated a moment longer.

“Seriously?”

“Of course.”

He didn’t really have a reponse to that. All he could do was smile and nod, head bobbing stupidly. He’d get to live in the normal world with someone who didn’t hate him… Emotion bubbled within him until he felt choked up.

“Thank you.”

“It’s honestly not a problem, I kind of miss living with someone. My friend James moved in with his girlfriend and I go kind of spare when it’s just me. This can be your room.”

He was getting his own _room_ and his own _bed._ He didn’t have anything to go in here, but that didn’t matter.

“How are the bites and stuff?”

“Still sore,” he admitted, “but that’s not new. I’m okay.”

“Do you think a bath would help?”

A _bath._ Remus hadn’t had a bath since Greyback had taken him, not unless you counted jumping in the stream on a summer’s day. Regardless of whether or not it would help, he jumped at the opportunity.

“It won’t make it worse,” he smiled. Even more appealing was the thought of actually being able to _wash,_ not just the blood, but all the residual mud and dirt which had collected over a long period.

“I’ll run you one in a bit. Do you want to see the flat first, if you can walk comfortably?”

It would be a good way of testing how well he was and he liked the idea of seeing the place if he was going to live here. It was just strange to be indoors, especially when it was so _warm._

Thankfully his legs weren’t too bad, at least not compared to the rest of his body – it didn’t take long for him to get up and move out of the room, finding himself in a comfortable living room.

“This is nice, really nice,” He looked around and then down at himself. They were both thinking about the same thing, surely – how incredibly tatty and out of place he looked in his muddy, bloody clothes and bare feet on the soft, clean carpet. Sirius led him through to a small kitchen and he found himself feeling only more shabby for the place. Everything here was _gleaming_ compared to what he knew.

“It’s great, isn’t it?” He asked restlessly, hurriedly giving Remus a glimpse of his own bedroom (quite messy) and the bathroom. “Make yourself at home, grab a seat. I’ll run a bath for you, if you want that now.”

He had disappeared before Remus could even answer, leaving the man standing on a very clean carpet and feeling dirtier than ever. A mirror across the room threatened to reflect his beaten-up body if he stepped in front of it – clearly, it would take more of a bath to fix. It would take an entire makeover for him to fit in here, and then some.

He didn’t even have any clothes.

“Sirius?”

“Yeah?”

The sound of running water stopped suddenly and a head poked around the door.

“Could you possibly wash my clothes whilst I’m in there?”

His expression softened and he laughed, though not unkindly.

“Remus, I have enough clean clothes to lend you something. They might be too baggy, but they’ll be warmer and cleaner than what you have and a lot more comfortable.”

“Oh… Thank you.”

He attempted to picture himself in Sirus’s tight black jeans and t-shirt and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant – just not very _him._

“I can give you a hand cutting your hair if you want?” He offered, “I didn’t my own, so I can’t be that terrible.”

Remus’s heart was thumping hard now; he was starting to feel bad that he couldn’t offer anything in return, or even give an answer, when Sirius was doing so much.

“How warm do you want it?”

The man had taken this all in his stride. As Remus crept closer to the bathroom door, still too nervous to sit anywhere and make the place dirty, he found him taking various potions and creams out of a little cabinet above the sink and laying them carefully on the floor.

“Anything is fine, this house is really warm anyway. It’s nice,” he added quickly, not wanting to worry him. “I’m just not used to it.”

“Alright, come here,” he beckoned him closer, pointing out the different bottles, “these are healing potions and creams and stuff for your wounds. Are they-” He looked awkward for a moment, passing one to Remus, “Do you need a hand reading them?”

Remus paused over them for slightly longer than Sirius would have done himself, but shook his head. Sirius was acting so _carefully_ about the whole subject, it was almost making him suspicious. Yet he was so grateful for the bath and the healing and everything that he managed a smile.

“It’s fine, I can read what they’re for and how much I can have.”

“Fantastic,” he beamed, “it’s probably ready now, so… Go ahead and get in when you want and I’ll put you some clothes outside the door and whip up some food or something.”

Sirius seemed to be unsure what to do with himself, but Remus didn’t worry about it – he was too busy running his finger through the warm, silky water and sighing softly.

“Shout if you need anything, alright?”

* * *

 

This wasn’t the first luxury he’d had since arriving here, the bath. Sirius had made him a hot drink and put him up in his bed.

But it was _this_ which really did it.

Remus had locked the bathroom door behind Sirius and practically rejoiced (he’d not had _privacy_ like this for so long). Careful not to knock any of his injuries, he had stripped off, legs shaking, until he was naked and standing in the middle of the room. Sirius mirror, which he could not avoid, showed his dirty, messy body for all its worth.

He screwed up his face. It didn’t look good.

But it wouldn’t look like _that_ for long.

And, careful not to burn himself by getting in too quickly, he climbed into the bath one foot at a time and almost moaned as the warm water washed over him. It was like the warmth of a fire, but even better. In fact, he wasn’t sure he had ever _been_ so warm as when he lay back and stared at the bubbles. It would be difficult not to fall asleep here. After all, there was work to be done…

The bath must have been magically charmed to stay this warm for a long time, but Remus only allowed himself so long to stay in it. His fingers were already becoming wrinkled by the time he forced himself to sit up and get to work.

It was no quick job. Some of the mud had been there for ages. But there was a large bottle of soap and a nail brush Sirius had offered him and after what felt like hours, there started to be less dirt and more skin underneath – pale and scarred and oddly human. Once the dirt was out of his nails, once he had washed in the shower and his teeth cleaned (Sirius had predicted his need there too and had left a new toothbrush for him), he might even be starting to look _normal._ Normal enough to walk down the street, at least.

By the time he had washed his hair with ample amounts of Sirius’s shampoo and condition – partially because of how _good_ it smelt – and had started on the various potions and creams, testing the little bits to see how they worked, Sirius was knocking on the door.

“Remus?”

“Mm?”

“You okay in there? I’m making lunch, it’ll be ready soon.”

Remus was quite sure he had woken very early in the morning and the tour of the flat had only taken a few minutes, which meant he must have been in here for hours, enjoying the warmth and solitude as he washed away the dirt, watching the muddy water swirl down the drain.

“Sorry, I won’t be long…”

“Take your time! I’m just putting clothes outside for you. I’ve found something that, um…” He sounded awkward, “I had it lying around, it belonged to someone I used to know.”

Only when he had disappeared did Remus open the bathroom door enough to grab the pile of clothes which Sirius had _attempted_ to fold. He pulled them on without even looking, but they felt warm and soft, and wound a towel around his hair so it sat on his head like a turban.

Sirius’s voice drifted out from another room – he was singing, clattering about as he cooked them food and Remus sat on the edge of the bath, too nervous to look in the mirror just yet. Maybe once his hair had been cut.

* * *

 

Sirius wasn’t sure what it was about Remus that brought this instinct to him, but it came thick and fast – he wanted to ensure the man had enough to eat, something to wear and was comfortable in just about every way possible. Maybe he felt guilty for what he had suffered… Maybe it was something else.

Either way, it did take a certain something for him to go rooting through the clothes his old one-night stands and boyfriends had left behind to find something he thought Remus would like – something soft and cosy and not too different from his old clothes, though less ragged.

After that, it had just been a matter of trying to put together an actual _meal_ (he wasn’t ready to brave going back to steal his rations) whilst he waited for Remus to finish off in the bath.

When the kitchen door opened, his back was still turned.

“Thanks for all the bath stuff…

“No problem,” he turned with a grin, pan in hand. But it faltered.

Remus looked…

He looked like a different man.

One of the creams in the bathroom had clearly done a great deal for his black eye and his bandages were fresh now – but that was just the start of it. He was clean, totally clean – underneath all the mud, he looked paler, though still tanned from spending so much time outside. The hairs which poked out from under the messy towel on his head were clean, a light brown colour. The nervous smile on his face wouldn’t have looked out of place on a first date. And the clothes? In the dark green jumper and pair of jeans Sirius had found him? He looked better than the man who had once owned them.

He looked _good._

_“_ That different?” Remus asked quietly, sinking into a chair with a tired sigh.

“Mhm. Have you seen?”

“I haven’t, not yet. Maybe after you do my hair, but that doesn’t need to be soon.”

“You look… Brilliant, Remus,” he smiled – a smile which reached his eyes and Remus himself and caused him to smile too. He had probably never felt more human than this, wearing new clothes and sitting in a kitchen in wait of a hot meal. It was like a wonderful dream he was surely about to wake up from.

“You like lasagne?”

“Um… I’ve not really had it for years.”

“Good,” Sirius said, “because I fucked up the first three attempts, so it’s going to be just pasta with some tomatoes and stuff.”

“I like tomatoes,” Remus offered helpfully, looking around the kitchen. “But I didn’t have that fruit too long ago.”

Sirius nodded; he guessed Remus wasn’t used to having three meals a day. But he also seemed to eat what he _did_ get very quickly, as though fearing it would disappear.

“You can have a bit and we’ll save the rest or something, whatever you need. And then you could sleep after lunch if you still don’t feel great…”

Remus nodded, apparently happy with that offered. He still looked tired, though – there were bags under his eyes and he looked rather ill.

“That sounds good.”

“I might have to leave this afternoon, if you’re okay with it. I’ll make sure nobody can get in,” he added hastily, “not that anyone has ever tried. I need to get some more food and stuff now you’re well enough for me to leave.”

He clattered around happily, locating bowls and cutlery to put on the table as Remus turned to look at a book on the table, one claiming to have very easy recipes for beginners. However easy, it seemed Sirius had failed – there were three lasagnes on the counter which looked pretty good for him, except for the fact one was rather burnt and there was one which Sirius tried a bite of and had to drink six glasses of water to recover from.

“You want me to buy you anything in particular to eat?”

Remus was looking down at the pasta under his nose and fiddled with his fork, stabbing the pasta as though out of practice with cutlery.

“We didn’t really eat much on the camp,” he admitted, eating a single tomatoes. He had gone a good couple of days without food and Sirius was expecting him to wolf it down. “There was meat and some fruit and vegetables and potatoes, but that was about it. Werewolves can survive on mostly meat,” he said nervously, “but I can go without it.”

“Well,” Sirius tried, “what do you _like_ eating? What did you like eating when you were a kid and stuff?”

Remus paused for a moment, but not for long – he was soon smiling as he loaded up his fork with more pasta.

“Well, chocolate. I always liked chocolate.”

Sirius laughed.

“I can definitely get you some of that. I’ll get some later and you can have it tonight because if I cook another meal, I might just end up having a tantrum,” he grinned. “How’s the pasta?”

“Starchy,” Remus said conversationally, “aside from potatoes, there aren’t really any carbs.”

“I’ll just advise you pace yourself. Until I learn to cook, we’ll be living off pasta and toast,” he said cheerfully, though this made Remus look more thoughtful than alarmed – which was what he was honestly expecting.

“I could cook…”

“You’re ill.”

“When I’m better, I mean. I’m not sure I can do fancy things, but I used to help my mum and I cooked some basic things on the camp.”

“You really don’t have to…”

“I’m living here,” Remus lowered his fork to the table again, looking down at his half-eaten food as though he couldn’t even think of eating the rest. “I’m living here and not doing anything useful or giving you any money and you healed me and stuff. I could at least pick up that book,” he motioned to the recipe book, “and make one of those,” he jabbed a finger in the direction of the lasagnes, “which we could both eat.”

Sirius leaned back in his chair and made no effort to stop eating his own pasta. He could probably have finished Remus’s, too.

“Alright,” he smiled, swallowing hastily, “when you feel well enough, you’re welcome to cook. We’re probably less likely to be poisoned that way.”

Remus appeared to be satisfied with that answer. In fact, he seemed more satisfied right now than he had been from the moment Sirius had met him, and happier still. For a moment, he found himself simply watching the man struggle with his meal.

If he wasn’t mistaken, he was actually looking forward to living with Remus Lupin.

Remus stood in front of the sofa and wavered.

It was stupid, but he still felt uneasy about it. He had started to help Sirius clear up from lunch, but the man had pointed out that he could do it with magic and that Remus, who was definitely still less than healthy, should really be lying down somewhere.

He had offered him the bed again, but the sofa was a change of scenery and somewhere he could sit for Sirius to cut his hair. The man had not been remotely bothered for a change of scenery, but he would like to have his hair cut.

But even after the shower, he still felt too dirty to be in this place, treading on the soft cream carpets and sitting on Sirius’s plushy sofa. Had there been anywhere like this to sit within the camp, Greyback would have a monopoly on it anyway.

As it happened, he wasn’t with Greyback any more…

Sirius approached, holding a towel and a pair of scissors in his hand.

“If you sit down, I can do it now,” he offered cheerfully. Remus wasn’t entirely sure if he had done this before, but he wasn’t planning on going outside soon, so it wouldn’t matter if he looked awful.

“Oh- Sure.”

He took a seat and felt himself sink several inches into the cushions, wriggling about carefully to get comfortable.

“So,” Sirius grinned, moving to sit behind Remus and having to perch on his knees to reach well enough. “What’ll it be?”

“Shorter?” He smiled tiredly, “I don’t know. I like yours but I don’t think it would suit me.”

Sirius’s hair looked _very_ good on Sirius, but Remus didn’t have his cheekbones or his eyes… Anyway, he would happily accept anything which was a change from the past four years.

“Bit shorter than mine, maybe? Enough so that you don’t start feeling cold. It is quite thick…” He pushed a comb through his hair and the man shuddered.

The last person to touch his hair like that had been just as soft, but there had been something more to it. Something he probably wouldn’t get again. He bit his lip, trying to push his thoughts away. So what if that had been the case? Ezra had been important to him, but he was long gone now…

“Shorter is good,” he agreed, “enough so that it doesn’t get in my eyes, that’s annoying.”

Sirius played with his hair in silence for several moments, humming softly to himself and sending Remus into a sleepy state. His eyes slide shut and his head dropped.

“Remus, I can’t put scissors near your neck if you’re going to be asleep. We can do this later? I have other things I can do…”

“No!” He tipped his head back up, forcing himself to stay awake. “I’ll stay awake, just talk to me about something.”

“Well,” Sirius said gently, wetting the comb and running it through his hair, “I’ve asked you a lot of questions about yourself, or I at least know a lot. So, do you have any questions about me?”

Remus paused to think – he’d be lying if he said hadn’t wanted to ask Sirius some things. But it was hard to shake off the cold superiority he had once known Sirius to have.

“Is this your job? Doing things for the Order of the Phoenix?”

“Yeah. Not everyone in the Order does it all the time, but I’m young and this war has been a big part of my life, so I’m devoted to the cause pretty much all the time. A few of us younger ones are.”

“How do you get money to live and stuff?” There was a not of hope in Remus’s voice – maybe they would find a use for him within the Order.

“Ah…” Sirius sounded guilty over the first few snipping noises, “I inherited quite a lot. Enough to live on, I was very lucky in that respect.”

“But I thought you had left your family?”

“I had, but I had an uncle who took my line of argument about these things and left me his part of the family fortune in his will. I have this place and enough to keep me going whilst I do things for the Order.”

“Merlin…”

Remus fell silent for a few moments, feeling rather nervous – he had not inherited anything from anyone and nor was he going to. He wasn’t sure what had happened to the money and possession his parents had owned before they were killed, but he may well have been presumed dead, meaning the money had probably gone to a distant relative he would never be able to trace.

“If you’re working full time for the Order,” Sirius said quickly, “Dumbledore will definitely make sure you have enough to eat and somewhere to live.”

That was a little better – but Remus had spent all of his life relying on other people for food. I would be nice not to have to rely on someone else for it again.

“As long as you’re here with me – hold still – and happy to cook us both food, then you can just be here. I own the place, so it would be stupid to charge you rent. I like having the company,” he smiled.

“Thanks…” It had been a long time since Remus had thought people actually enjoyed his company. “You really don’t mind?”

“Genuinely. _Seriously.”_

The younger man laughed, careful to stay still as his eyes roamed around the room and he fiddled with his sleeve nervously.

“Are these your clothes?”

“I can get you some new ones later, don’t worry about that,” Sirius said idlily, missing the point.

“Thank you. But do they belong to you? They seem like they’d be too long for you?”

The clothes were, as it happened, a bit too baggy but basically the right length for Remus, who was a good bit taller than Sirius.

“They belonged to people I used to know…”

He was testing the water now, but Remus would have to find out the whole truth by himself.

“Boyfriends?”

He’d hit the nail on the head. And from his tone, he wasn’t angry, just curious. It suddenly made him seem quite a lot more innocent than usual. Remus was anything _but_ innocent, after what he’d seen, but that didn’t show now.

“Kind of, we didn’t really do much dating,” he smirked slightly, “most of the time we were just back here, you know…”

Remus _did_ know, he very much knew. But Sirius had frowned suddenly and dropped his hands, lacking the benefit of seeing Remus’s expression.

“You’re okay with me talking about that, right?”

From what Remus had gone through at the camp, it might be dangerous to assume anything.

“About you shagging people in your own house?” He actually turned, smiling at the look of embarrassment on Sirius’s face. “Of course it’s okay, we’ve all done it. Well- Not in your house. You know what I mean.”

It was Remus’s turn to look flustered this time, turning away and suddenly feeling quite exposed. Sirius was only curious, though.

“Someone on the camp?” He asked, surprised, “would they be safe if they have connections to you? Do I need to inform the Order?”

_That_ was his way of finding out who this was, if it had been recent or significant. He couldn’t quite place why, but the idea of werewolves fucking each other just seemed slightly odd. It was something he’d not considered before.

“He’s long gone now, it’s fine.”

Remus was twisting a loose thread from the jumper around his finger, tighter and tighter until the tip of his finger was white – but Sirius wasn’t looking, his eyes drawn to a scar on Remus’s neck, concerned it hadn’t healed properly.

The words stopped him in his tracks, because Remus had definitely told him he had been with a man.

“I’m sorry he’s gone, if it was for bad reasons…”

“These things happen.” He shrugged – it was an attitude he had been forced to adopt if only as a form of self-protection. He’d barely even had a chance to mourn, but the emotions had wriggled out of him in other ways – anger at Greyback, aggression he didn’t feel he could control, a feeling of bleakness he couldn’t shake off.

Sirius sensed the conversion wasn’t going to get them anywhere.

“On a lighter note, the hair’s looking good right now, I think I’ll suit you. How are you feeling now? I can carry on later if you need a break.”

“There was none of this at the camp, potions and sofas and pastas,” he smiled, “I know I’m not well and I’m worse than I’ve been in a long time, but I’ve coped with similar without any of this. So thank you… But I’m okay.”

“Ah,” Sirius grinned.

_He_ had been more used to potions and healing charms at Hogwarts, accustomed to the coddling of Madam Pomfrey and even the occasional bowl of ice cream when he was sick. Remus probably hadn’t had ice cream in a very long time.

“I become a bit of a wimp when I’m ill, that’s all. If I _do_ get ill, then you might have to put up with me being more dramatic than you are about it.”

Remus laughed a little, nodding.

“I’m not saying I’ll be very good at it, but I don’t mind helping you out if you do get ill.”

“It’ll mainly be getting me bowls of ice cream.”

“To be honest, I can probably just about stretch to _that.”_

Sirius grinned at him, even if Remus wouldn’t be able to see it. He had gone from hostile to polite to  actually _funny,_ someone nice to be around. Now with the clothes and the haircut and cleanliness, it was a lot easier to see him as a normal person. Right now, he could even have fit into an Order meeting if it wasn’t for the fact he had a black eye and bandages all over him.

“You’re a hero, really. I don’t know what I would do without you. I’m coming round to do the front now, it’s looking good.”

Remus pressed his lips together in a small smile, nodding to himself. Sirius was being so friendly, so kind to him and it was starting to seem like he wasn’t even doing it in the hope of getting something out of it. Sirius moved around to his front quickly and shifted backwards, feeling achy. If he was being honest, he would have happily have another nap right now, feeling warm and safe…

Sirius had to stay on his knees in front of Remus and cut. It hadn’t seemed so much when he was around the back, but he suddenly felt _very_ close. He was used to closeness, but Sirius wasn’t just doing it for lack of space or because he was intimidating him. He was so close that Remus could _smell_ him, smell the shampoo Sirius used and the cologne he was wearing. It was a long time since he had been around anyone so nice-smelling.

His eyes drooped shut, the only sound filling the room now Sirius’s scissors snipping at his hair and his soft humming. Occasionally, he leaned backwards to check how it looked, but he said nothing, which Remus, who was beginning to feel sleepier and sleepier, was appreciative of.

* * *

 

He awoke to silence. Total silence.

From the look of it, he’d been asleep for a while now. No longer was it light outside, but the window in the living room was showing nothing but an inky blue sky. He might have looked out at it if he was in a better state to move.

As it happened, he was still rather achy and sore, but enough so that he could sit up. Sirius had put a blanket over him and a pillow under his head, but he was still on the sofa and reluctant to move.

Remus’s hands wandered around sleepily until he found a piece of parchment on his lap, a note clearly written from Sirius. He’d done it in large handwriting, too, making it easier to read.

_Remus,_

_I’ve gone to the shops to get some food and things for you – that means chocolate!_

_I’ll be back before seven in the evening. If you feel ill or get worried, throw the powder in the pot on the fireplace into the fire and call Dumbledore’s name._

_I managed to finish cutting your hair, if you want to look._

_See you later!_

_Sirius._

Remus read the note through twice and looked around the flat – it was very quiet if Sirius had arrived home, so he was going to assume he was still out shopping. Remus felt a little bad that he was buying all these things for him, but it would be nice to have chocolate after so long. It had been _years_ since he’d tasted it. Perhaps he wouldn’t like it any more, but that didn’t seem at all likely.

He sighed tiredly and moved to run a hand through his hair, checking himself when it felt so much shorter than before, clearly finished off properly. The mirror in the bathroom wouldn’t be hard to reach if he wanted…

As he picked himself up from the sofa, a sudden pool of nerves formed in his stomach about seeing himself like this. What if he could never look properly human? What if, even after all this, he still just looked like a werewolf?

He’d been so hopeful that this might make him different, but he could never change what he was, as Greyback regularly reminded him. No amount of washing and nice clothes would stop that…

But Sirius obviously didn’t think he looked so bad that he’d refused to let him into the house. That was something.

Biting his lip hard, Remus crept into the bathroom to stand in front of the mirror. He’d been there only a few hours earlier, but the room was darker now and so much had happened since he’d first climbed into that bath.

“What…?!”

Remus’s jaw had dropped as he found himself in the mirror, staring at the man it reflected. He’d not had access to a mirror for a long time, but it didn’t take much intelligence to know that he hadn’t looked like _this_ until recently.

The man staring back looked clean. He looked _normal._ He looked so unlike anyone on the camp that if he went back now, people probably wouldn’t even _recognise_ him. Hair shiny, skin free of grim and blood…

_This_ was how he could only have dreamed about looking until now.

His heart wrenched.

Even the clothes looked normal, so much so that he looked about as human as Sirius did.

Remus swallowed roughly and the man in the mirror did too, his eyes brimming with tears until the image became blurry again. But still so starkly _human._

He’d never felt like this before.

Never this human.

Never this _happy._


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cue my laptop crashing the second I try to upload this
> 
> thanks for all the nice comments <3 I really appreciate them

It was good for Sirius to get out again, get into the fresh air and see the outside world. After only a few weeks of living outside he already felt oddly lost when he didn’t leave the house – it was hard to imagine how Remus probably found it when he’d been living that way for ten years, but that would be an issue they faced when he was well enough to be up and about some more.

Leaving the house didn’t come from a need to escape from _him._ Sirius genuinely liked Remus, so much so that he was starting to enjoy taking care of him, but they were running out of food fast and there were only so many things left behind from past men which would fit Remus. It was only a case of picking up the basics anyway – when Remus was ready to head out of the house, they could shop together.

He tried not to think about how long it would take the werewolf to adjust, how much of a culture shock it would be. And that was only about adjusting to _this_ world. There were things about Fenrir Greyback that Sirius wondered if the man would ever recover from…

For now, though, he figured he just ought to buy the chocolate for the man and return home – the last thing he wanted was to find Remus suffering or scared – he hadn’t actually left him alone before now. But fast asleep on the sofa, Sirius had decided it was necessary to make a trip for their food for the next few days.

So he had done: he had hurried down to a few shops to pick up things Remus was used to eating (meat, apples, potatoes – things Sirius wasn’t really sure how to cook) and things he usually ate himself (bread and a takeaway pizza menu). That would just have to be good enough until next time.

He’d only been gone an hour and a half, returning to the flat with a sense of urgency and turning his key in the lock before creeping into the flat in the hope the man had stayed asleep the whole time. The messy blanket on the empty sofa told another story, though.

“Hello? I’m home!”

The silence was as unsettling as he always found silence, but he called out again in the hope Remus just wasn’t listening.

“Remus? Are you here?”

He hurried through the flat, terrified something might have happened to the man, but it was clearly for nothing – the bathroom door was wide open and Remus inside, his back to Sirius. The reflection in the mirror gave it all away, though. He looked astounded. There were tear tracks on his face, the only marks on his clean skin other than a smattering of faded scars.

“Are you okay, mate?”

He wanted to put his hand on Remus’s back or something – anywhere – as he would have done for James or Peter, but he hadn’t touched Remus like that before and was hardly willing to do it in case it made things worse.

“I- Don’t worry,” Remus sniffed, hastily rubbing his eyes and turning around.

Sirius had to bite back a smile at the sight of him awake and far cleaner, more put-together than he had ever seen him, an entirely different man.

“Everything alright?”

“Just a cold.”

“Mhm,” he sounded sceptical, reaching for some toilet roll and handing a scrunched-up ball to the man, “have some tissues. I can show you what I got you at the shops, if you like? You got my note, right?”

Remus, like Regulus often did, leaned readily into the distraction techniques, embracing the change of subject with a swift wipe of his cheeks for good measure, nodding.

“You really didn’t have to buy me anything.”

“Yeah, but you can’t borrow underwear from me forever,” he grinned, “and we’re running low on food.”

Remus followed him to the sofa, the pair sitting back down to allow Sirius to extract things from his shopping bags – underwear, a couple of jumpers and some jeans and a _very_ large bar of chocolate, which he thrusted at him with a smile.

“There you go, all yours?”

He watched him hold the bar in his lap, fingers toying with the wrapper as his eyes moved over the rest of the purchases.

“Why the jumpers?” Remus smiled, fingers moving towards the wool, rubbing the fabric carefully.

“Well, I assumed you would want a few more things to wear before we actually go and buy some stuff when you’re better and you look good in the jumper you’re wearing right now, it suits you.”

Remus’s cheeks flushed with more colour than they had done in several days, but he looked rather pleased by the time he worked up the courage and words to reply.

“It suits me more than the clothes I was wearing before,” he didn’t have to describe them for Sirius to know what he meant – they had been dirty and quite literally falling apart, “but thanks… It’s nice and warm,” he hugged his knees to his chest and Sirius felt a tug at his chest which made him want to give _all_ his jumpers to Remus.

“Honestly not a problem. How are you feeling now?”

“I fell asleep on you, didn’t I?”

“I’ve not poisoned that chocolate, you know,” he said warmly, nudging it towards Remus, who had been eyeing it a little warily until now, and willing him to eat it. He deserved a lot more than he’d been given in life so far and whilst a little chocolate wouldn’t really help, it most definitely would do the man no harm. “And yes, you got really sleepy all of a sudden, but I don’t mind.”

Remus bit back a smile and fumbled with the wrapped until a solid block of chocolate was sitting on the foil. Sirius was expecting him to eat it, but the man lifted it to his nose first, inhaling slowly and letting out a sigh of longing at which Sirius couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

“I’ve not had any since I was eight.”

“Did Greyback never let you have any on the camp? Not even once?” He added, as Remus let out a laugh and shook his head.

“He only wanted meat, he thought we were soft whenever we ate anything else, I stopped doing it around him a while ago.”

“Wouldn’t that be impossible to live on?”

Remus ran his tongue up and down the bar, but Sirius didn’t think it was particularly laughable – it was the mark of a man who had long forgotten how to act normally. When he looked up to answer, there was a smudge of chocolate on the tip of his nose.

“It’s different for werewolves, we don’t need to eat other stuff.”

“Doesn’t mean you don’t want to, thought, right?”

Sirius, who had been expecting Remus to break off a square of chocolate, blinked as the man bit right into it and let out a moan of sheer delight, his eyes closing and head tipped back. There was nothing indecent about it, though, just the bliss of a man enjoying something he’d not been allowed for years. Sirius laughed, a warm laugh which filled the whole room.

“Good?”

“Mmfmmfm.”

He had taken a second bite of chocolate before even finishing the first, clutching like nothing had ever mattered to him more. Sirius was forced to put a hand to his mouth to stifle a laugh, but he doubted it would have mattered all too much if he hadn’t. It was another couple of minutes before Remus even put down the chocolate long enough to speak, rubbing his stomach with a dreamy expression.

“Thank you.”

“Honestly not a problem. I bought loads, figured you should probably get your strength back up – at least, that’s what the school matron always told me when I had a Quidditch accident.”

“I don’t mean just for this, though,” Remus said quietly, lowering the bar back onto the wrapper and licking the melted remains from his fingers, looking much more at home doing this than he did when using a fork. “You saved my life and gave me all these new things and a haircut. I’m,” he swallowed hard, “It might not mean that much to you, but it’s a big deal to me. I’m really grateful.”

Sirius was on the verge of saying that it _was_ a big deal for him, at least in terms of the emotional investment, that he was delighted to see Remus so much happier and settled than before and he had been extremely worried about him for a while now, but he stopped himself, fearing how it might sound.

“Well, it didn’t look like Greyback was doing much for you at the camp. And be honest with me, you would have done the same if he’d attacked me, right? Not all the stuff, but I’m sure you would have helped me out.”

Remus nodded – it had been a fair assumption.

“Of course I would, but it’s different from that.”

“How so?” Sirius sat himself on the arm of the sofa and looked on with genuine curiosity, apparently surprising Remus. “I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“Well, I’m a werewolf.”

“So? You were still unconscious…”

Remus ducked his head to his lap for a moment and he sighed, running a hand through his hair with a troubled expression Sirius had not anticipated.

“I don’t even know how much is true, given it’s Greyback saying it,” he said quietly, lips barely moving, “but I’m fairly sure that wizards aren’t a big fan of werewolves. You certainly had some genuine dislike when we first met, that can’t have just been acting. And why would people want to heal somebody who would only try to kill them?”

Suddenly feeling incredibly guilty, Sirius started to fiddle with his sleeve. Remus had raised a worryingly good point – he may have healed the werewolf now, but even Sirius with his rejection of the notions of blood purity and hatred of stereotypes, had been reluctant and fearful to meet the werewolves. Some of it had been with good reason, but he had also allowed one of them to sleep in his spare bed, cook his meals and move into his house. He had, in essence, been wrong.

Now feeling as though he was made of glass, transparent to the gaze from Remus’s brown eyes. He was the man who had refused to shake Greyback’s hand when they first met and barely even looked Remus in the eye – the eyes which were now boring into him, the look furthered by how incredibly _human_ he appeared. Nobody would have known he was a werewolf if they looked at him now, free of any signs of it except for the faint scars across his face and the fading black eyes.

“I suppose.”

He sighed – Remus deserved the truth, but it was an incredibly uncomfortable one.

“There was genuine dislike when I met you, I guess,” he mumbled, “but it was wrong. I’d never _met_ anyone like you, I’d only heard things. I don’t want you to think-”

Sirius looked up to find Remus smiling at him and shaking his head, several thousand times more relaxed than Sirius himself felt.

“Sirius,” he started, “you don’t have to explain it to me. It’s pretty much always like that and I know you don’t think the exact same things now because you’re letting me live here in your house. I just meant that I can’t really expect people to want me to heal, can I?”

“Surely you could go to St Mungo’s if you needed?” He leaned back, more relaxed now Remus seemed cool with it. Deep down, Sirius knew it was disgusting that he had learnt to accept, even expect this kind of treatment, but changing that mindset in him would not happen overnight.

“Kind of. Not exactly, at last count, but that was a while ago.”

Sirius cocked his head to the side and watched Remus play with the ends of his short hair, twirling it around his fingers and seeming continually surprised by its length.

“Healers at St Mungo’s _can_ treat us, but they’re also allowed to refuse to without question,” he shrugged, “it’s on the file of anyone who went there when they were fist bitten, though I suppose people who were taken away when they were bitten haven’t been to St Mungo’s since becoming a werewolf. Maybe they’d get away with it?”

“Nobody’s tried?”

“Not as far as I know. I’ll ask when I get back to camp, I guess.” He yawned softly, causing Sirius to leap to his feet and start drawing curtains over windows around the flat, only stopping when he spoke back to Remus with a direct look in his eye.

“You’re not going _back._ ”

“I’m not? I’m hardly any use elsewhere, am I?”

“Greyback thinks you’re dead. When I got you out of there, I told him I was going to finish you off. Sorry if it’s not your style, but I had to get you out somehow.”

“Oh…”

“Surely you don’t _want_ to go back?”

There was an uncharacteristic harshness to his voice all of a sudden. Ever since Sirius had taken Remus in, he had been gentle and quiet with him, careful not to be too loud or brash as he could be and speaking as though he didn’t want to make the man think he had angered him for any reason. But Sirius could not simply avoid his feelings about people living in situations which were clearly damaging and harmful for him. He’d waiting years to be ab le to have an escape route and Remus had been offered one by him just now, yet he seemed to be wavering about the prospect. What could possibly be better about there than here? Maybe there wasn’t much place for him in this world, but he had healing potions and a warm bed and someone who genuinely liked him…

Yet Remus still fidgeted, looking uneasy. He hadn’t flinched under the look, but seemed to have set his jaw, expression now closer to how it had been when Sirius was pretending to be a Death Eater who took Greyback’s side on all matters.

“No- Ye- No I don’t, of course I don’t. I don’t like it there and I don’t like him,” he muttered, apparently now offended that Sirius might think he wanted to be in a place like that, where people were regularly tortured, hurt and killed for fun. “I just think I perhaps should? I don’t belong here at all and there are things I did there to help other people. What if he gets more violent towards the others?”

Sirius wavered on the edge of shouting and sympathy. It took a couple of slow, deep breaths before he brought himself around to the latter.

“Do you honestly think Greyback liked anyone less than you?”

“No, but if I’m the worst thing there, then it makes it safer for everyone else, doesn’t it? He won’t take it out on them.”

At this, Sirius’s mood crumbled. He moved to sit back on the sofa, but placed himself not on the arm, but the cushion beside Remus, looking directly at him with a soft expression.

“So you think you should go back because if you’re first in the firing line, it will keep everyone else safe?”

He watched the man bite his lip for a minute, as though he was trying to come up with a better way of putting it, but Remus eventually just nodded.

“Something like that.”

Sirius closed his eyes. It didn’t take much to transport him back to where he had been several years ago. It hadn’t been the same for Remus, not at all, but… His mother and father had loathed him. They’d said and done terrible things and had wanted him out for a long time before he actually managed to leave. For a long time, he had been scared to go – not to leave them, but for lack of an escape route and the fear of leaving his younger brother behind with two evil, sadistic parents.

But Regulus was different, right? They had always liked Regulus. Even when they shouted at him, which admittedly wasn’t often, their tones had been softer and less demanding. He had been their golden boy – Walburga didn’t _need_ someone to take her anger out on at any particular time, she had just chosen to exercise the right whenever Sirius _was_ around.

“Will Greyback honestly turn on someone else just because you’re here? Before he got like that with you, was he like it with other people?”

He couldn’t meet Remus’s eye, fearing he was pushing too far, but knowing full well that he needed to if this man was going to stay safe. He had asked to join the Order and part of that involved having their protection, whether he liked it or not…

“I don’t know, maybe not as bad. But that doesn’t mean he won’t do anything.”

“Surely he’ll be in a better mood generally if you’re not around? Less likely to feel the need to take it out on other people?”

“I suppose…”

Remus seemed to be enjoying this conversation about as much as Sirius was – his eyes were flitting around the room nervously, as though he was looking for an escape route, one which Sirius was most certainly not going to provide

“You can’t always throw yourself in the face of danger to help protect someone who might not even be in any danger.” He said quietly. “Believe me. I can’t say I always follow that advice myself, but I’d rather you didn’t die at the hands of Greyback. You might think you’re exposing people to him out there now, but you’ll be saving so many lives. We’ll have other ways of ensuring people are okay.”

Remus stared at the floor, looking as though the weight of everything was crashing over his shoulders. There seemed to be no way of doing anything without someone getting hurt, which Sirius knew as well as anyone.

“From what I’ve gathered, Remus, he’s done some pretty bad things to you and your life.”

“Yeah.” There was no arguing against that, Greyback had fucked up a lot for him.

“You can go back if you have to,” Sirius said heavily, “if that’s what you really want, then I can’t physically stop you. You can stay in the Order of even leave the Order and return. All I’ll ask is that you’ll give a little time to think it over?”

Remus, who had started fiddling with the paper wrapper of the chocolate bar and was now looking very tired, nodded so sleepily that Sirius now felt  rather bad for raising this when he was clearly unwell.

“Thank you.”

* * *

 

If there was one thing Remus disliked about this place, it was the windows. He couldn’t place why, though – having not been outside for days, when he had spent the last twelve years living outside, windows should have been a welcome reminder of what he had come from. He missed the fresh air, after all, and the sounds of birds and streams – it felt odd at night when all he could hear was the rumble of traffic in the distance.

But the window in his room only made that worse – it was even harder at night, too. The bed in his room faced it, so that if his eyes were open, he could see light glowing through the curtains. Remus wasn’t afraid of the dark or the night, but there was a definite sense of dread attached to the window.

It was odd enough getting used to sleeping on a proper bed again when he was so used to a hard floor. It felt comfortable, but the more he recovered, the longer it took him to get to sleep with soft pillows and blankets everywhere. It had felt incredibly fussy until he abandoned everything on the bed except for a single pillowcase and blanket, which still felt like overkill even then, but he would be able to adjust to.

Yet in the oddly new comfort of the bed at night, his eyes soon drifted to the closed windows which lurked behind the curtains and he suddenly _wanted_ all the blankets back, if only to act as a barrier between himself and the window.

He would just have to get used to it, because this was something Sirius couldn’t just fix. He wouldn’t be able to remove a whole window and his flat needed the daylight anyway.

Remus just wasn’t sure why he was so scared to look at it, or why he was so scared of looking away from it.

Only after what felt like hours of lying in the dark did he begin to uncover it. He still couldn’t work out why, but it was the window _opening_ that really bothered him. Right now, in October, they were bound to stay shut for months, but he still lay in fear that they would be opened.

It took another three blankets he pulled over himself for Remus to feel safe enough to drift into an uneasy sleep, tossing and turning as he curled into a ball as best as possible and tried not to think about the window in the room. How was it that he was sleeping so much worse in a real bed and a warm house than when he was on the floor of a cave, right next to the most dangerous man he knew?

Was there just something wrong with him?

* * *

 

When morning finally came, Remus felt worse for wear than he had anticipated. He’d slept in late, but it had clearly been a restless and unfulfilling sleep which left him feeling strangely as though he had spent more of the night awake than he had done asleep.

He had stayed in bed for a while, eyes closed and head aching – there wasn’t really a need to get up anyway – until he heard a knock on the door which nearly scared him out of his skin – until he remembered it was probably Sirius.

“Yeah?”

“Just me.” The door opened to reveal a smiling Sirius, fully dressed and carrying a tray. “I wasn’t sure if you were awake, but it’s late and I’ve got some food and some news, if you want it.”

He was unsure if it was because he was recovering or because he looked so much more like a normal human, but Remus felt slightly self-conscious about his sleepy and bedraggled state as he pulled himself into a sitting position with some effort and smiled.

“Thanks.”

“Not a problem,” Sirius placed the tray on his lap with an expression close to pride, even if it was just a cup of tea and some sausages – he had clearly been trying hard with his cooking. Remus had always been happy to see some food, though. “How did you sleep? How are you feeling?”

“Oh, you know, alright…” He was sure his eyes betrayed him, though, because Sirius’s were filling with concern and his kept flitting to the window. “How are you?”

“Good thanks.” He was cheerful, clearly having slept quite well. “I’ve been looking for things I can make us to eat until you’re better. And someone has contacted me this morning.”

He looked eager, clearly hoping for Remus to respond, though he was struggling to work out who would have wanted to contact _him._

“Oh?”

“Yeah, Dumbledore wanted to come and talk to you, if it’s okay.”

He nearly dropped the sausage he had been holding, staring at him.

“He wants to come here? To see _me?”_

“Yeah, and it’s weird. He never comes here. I spent most of the morning cleaning the bathroom after that,” he grinned, “but of course he wants to talk to you, you are part of the Order now and you’ve been injured. He probably wants to make sure you’re okay. And, well, I can’t say my healing was the best, so if anything still hurts, he might be able to help you out…”

It was a good outcome. If Remus was comfortable speaking to anyone other than Sirius, then it would be Dumbledore. But Dumbledore carried with him a kind of authority which Sirius really didn’t have – he was much older and wiser and better at making Remus feel incredibly small and worried about how he looked and sounded.

“Is that okay?”

“Of course, thank you. I just didn’t actually think he would want to speak to me or anything,” he smiled wryly, “he seemed to be busy with more important things.”

“The Order doesn’t have many members, that’s true,” he said slowly, “so he is often busy, but you’re important enough for him to speak to.”

Remus could only be glad he was meeting Dumbledore _after_ having had a haircut and a bit of cleaning up – it was one thing having Sirius see him an utter mess, but this man had taught his father and he just wanted to make a good impression.

“You want me to get him to come after you’ve had a chance to shower?”

The man, who had to take a moment to remind himself that people like Sirius could shower on a daily basis, nodded after a moment of thought. He liked the shower – the warm water, the privacy.

Sirius shot him another grin and git up, clearly quite pleased that Dumbledore had taken it upon himself to come to their house. Remus, on the other hand, could only feel a kind of nervous excitement – would this man expect him to act in a certain way? To be like something? Would Dumbledore expect him to be as good as his father had been? Or did he expect little of him, nothing more than any sane person would expect of a werewolf? Unsure as to which of those things was better, he forced himself out of bed and into a much quicker shower than the one of the previous day.

By the time he was dry and dressed, he found Sirius in the kitchen, facing a pile of random ingredients and a single sheet of brightly coloured paper.

“Is he here yet?” He fiddled with the ends of his hair, which were just slightly damp.

“Nah, won’t be long. I wasn’t deciding what to make for dinner tonight, given I’ll probably need to start now, knowing my track record with food,” he sighed, staring down at a bag of carrots as though they might simply start cooking themselves.

Smiling to himself, Remus stepped a little closer and shook his head. “The first trick to that is putting the oven a lot lower or getting the food out a lot sooner.”

“I’m _sorry,”_ Sirius grinned, turning around to face him with a menacing expression, eyes bright, “are you showing up my cooking skills when you’ve not even had access for ten years?”

For half a second, Remus wavered on his response, fearing confrontation. But Sirius was just teasing him, nodding him along to continue the joke – he might have been the first person to do so in years, but Remus definitely knew a joke, especially when it was looking him right in the face.

“Well,” he said with a flicker of a grin himself, “well, I suppose I am. I guess you’re just _that_ bad.”

The laugh which left Sirius’s lap made Remus feel as though he was about ten kilograms lighter – _he’d_ made him laugh like that, his hand on his side and his eyes crinkling. He’d not made someone laugh like that and felt like _this_ before, but it definitely wasn’t a bad thing.

“How dare you! I’ll make my speciality tonight, you’ll see, Lupin.” He seized the piece of paper, waving it in Remus’s face so fast he couldn’t see it.

“I might pass on dinner,” he chuckled, crossing his arms over his head and feeling quite lightheaded, “unless…”

Sirius has stopped waving the paper long enough for him to read the words and images on it.

“Is that a _pizza_ menu?”

“I never said was actually going to _cook_ my speciality. It just so happens that my greatest skill, Remus, is picking up a Muggle telephone and asking for a pepperoni pizza.”

Remus’s laugh was so high pitched that it might have been a giggle, but evidently not one Sirius had time to comment on before there was a loud whooshing sound from the room next door which stopped both of them in their tracks.

“That’ll be him!”

He followed at Sirius’s heel in a nervous jog, one which he probably wasn’t well enough to do, and wished he was short enough to hide the pureblood. But Sirius Black wasn’t a tall man and Remus _was,_ leaving him exposed and under the penetrating eye of Albus Dumbledore the second they entered the room.

“Dumbledore,” Sirius smiled easily, speaking in a tone Remus couldn’t imagine himself ever using with the man, “it’s good to see you.”

“It’s good to see you, Sirius,” he smiled, eyes twinkling. The man looked odd standing in this house in his long purple robe and bright gold shoes, but Dumbledore didn’t seem remotely uncomfortable about his position. Quite the contrary, he settled himself on Sirius’s sofa without need for an invitation, and plumped up a pillow for behind his back. “You seem considerably more cheerful than when we last spoke.”

“Well, you know, not the nicest place to live, is it?” He smiled apologetically at Remus, who couldn’t have agreed with him more. “I’ll go and make coffee…”

Sensing Sirius wanted it to be just the two of them for a while, he backed out of the room to start clattering around in the kitchen again, Remus finding himself settling down on the sofa with a weird consciousness of every part of his body.

“Remus,” he turned in his seat with much grace and ease for a man of his age, “it’s very good to meet you at last.”

He extended a wrinkled hand with long, slender fingers which Remus shook, feeling really rather awkward and wishing Sirius was still in the room.

“Thanks… I’ve wanted to meet you too, ever since my dad told me about you.”

“Of course,” his eyes twinkled, “I daresay he told you all about the amount of homework I set him during his schooldays, though I can only say it made him a very fine wizard. He was a good man, your father. I’m sorry about what happened to him.”

“It’s okay,” Remus said quietly, “it was a long time ago.”

Both Sirius and Dumbledore had been saying things like that to him lately and it was _weird;_ nobody had bothered to say it at the time. _Greyback,_ the only person who needed to apologise, had done no such thing. Everyone had simply expected him to shut up and move on. Which he had done, surely?

“These things take time,” he said gently, in a tone quite unlike anything people had used with him before. “But I suppose you don’t want me to talk to you about that now. I’ve come here for something else.”

“Mm?”

Only now did he realise that he wasn’t quite sure why Dumbledore _had_ come here, other than to ‘see how he was doing’, which sounded to him like a cover story for an ulterior motive.

“I wanted to thank you, Remus?”

“What for?” He settled in the chair a little more comfortably, feeling as though he was able to trust the old man. “Sirius rescued me, _you_ let me join the Order.”

“You chose to join and bore the cost of standing up for a young boy who was going to be hurt, continuing exactly the work we aim to carry out. We’re incredibly grateful; whilst you may not be trained in magic or used to the wizarding world in the way some of us are, your help is still invaluable, Remus.”

“Does this mean you want me to go back to the camp?” He asked, tone quiet, “I’m good for that, I guess…”

“My dear man, you nearly _died_ in that fight, of course you’re not going back.”

It sounded different from when Sirius had said it – Sirius was kind and funny and wonderful, but he was only Remus’s age and had a lot less experience of the camp than Remus had. Dumbledore himself had none whatsoever, but he didn’t feel like he could go against this man’s commands in the same way. He just wanted to do the right thing.

“Is there anything useful I _can_ do?”

“Have you ever used a wand?”

“No… I held my dad’s once or twice, I suppose, but I wasn’t allowed to use it.” His eyes twinkled – his parents had been somewhat flexible when it came to that law. Sometimes Lyall had cast a simple charm with both of them holding the wand, but Dumbledore probably shouldn’t have known that. It could tarnish his father’s good name and put Remus in danger with the law… “But Greyback has that now.”

“Greyback has your father’s wand?”

Remus was beginning to tire of this coming up so often, but nodded anyway.

“Would you like it back?”

“I suppose… Well, yes. Thank you. But I’m not sure it’s going to happen.”

_He_ wouldn’t be trying it anyway – the last attempt had resulted in him losing the only thing he had and whilst none of the things he had now equalled Ezra, he definitely did not want to lose the safety of this place.

“I’m not sure either,” Dumbledore admitted, “and you should definitely get one for yourself anyway, but I will try, if the opportunity arises.”

Remus got the distinct impression he would only do it if there was a given opportunity – rather than Sirius, who had acted as though he could just walk into the place and take it from Greyback’s own hand. He took a moment to appreciate the wisdom which came with age and nodded in gratitude, though his reply was interrupted by Sirius, who was attempting to carry three mugs into the room with obvious difficulty.

“How are the injuries?”

He took a mug from the pureblood and settled back in his seat. “Oh, they’re okay… They’ve never been this bad, but I’ve not had the potions for a long time. I sort of balances out, I’m feeling better.”

“Yeah, until he eats something I cook,” Sirius muttered. He had curled up in a chair with a smirk and was looking from one man to the other with vague interest. “I’m still worried about making you _more ill,_ Remus…”

Dumbledore was laughing, drinking from his mug (one which read ‘Hello, hansome in curvy blue letters) and Remus mirrored with his somewhat more conservative Winnie-the-Pooh mug with a smile.

“I have good news for both of you, in that case. Molly, the Prewett brothers’ younger sister, has offered to cook some things for the two of you. She sympathises with the cause, but raising several young children makes her time very limited. She is happy to provide you with food, though.”

Sirius actually _moaned,_ his eyes rolling back into their sockets in a way which left both Dumbledore and Remus torn between embarrassment and amusement.

“I’ve said I’m happy to cook when I’m better,” Remus piped up, “but please thank her from me, if it means I don’t have to eat what Sirius cooked,” a grin flickered across his cheek.

Dumbledore looked from the werewolf to the pureblood with a smile, as though he had succeeded in his mission after all.

“I’m not sure if you are aware,” he said quietly, “but James and Lily both have a day off on Saturday. I’m sure you’d like to see them… And Peter, who has been quite ill recently.”

Sirius beamed, straightening up, but Remus was still blank when he turned to him.

“So, do you want to meet my best friend and his fiancée?”

Remus was sure nobody else in the entire wizarding world was going to be as kind or accepting of him as these two men had been, but the look of Hope on Sirius’s face and the fact he had just offered him a permanent place to live meant it very difficult to say no. He might just have to stick his chin up and do it.

He nodded.

“I’m sure we won’t have pizza or anything I’ve cooked.”

Remus nodded again, but suddenly felt quite exhausted. First Dumbledore and now two more people? He was nervous, excited, touched that Sirius was so invested in him meeting people this important to him. After all, it was probably not going to be much worse than this – and it definitely wouldn’t be worse than anything else he’d been through.

But most of all, he still felt completely on edge every time he looked at the window.

* * *

 

It didn’t take long for Sirius to become used to the presence of Remus Lupin in his house, but it was starting to raise some issues. Not issues, even – more just questions which hovered on the border between nosy and concerned, things he was sure he couldn’t just _ask,_ but matters it seemed as though it would be beneficial to know about.

Some of them were little things – why he always held mugs and glasses in two hands, why he either sat on the floor or curled up fully on the sofa, never just resting his feet on the ground, why he had _such_ a liking for tomato soup…

But there were other things he could _never_ just raise. He’d only just had a glimpse of some of the things Greyback had done on the camp, but there had to be more. And then there were things he had only just mentioned – about his parents being killed, about the boy he’d slept with who was no longer around. About the way he reacted to certain things…

It was manageable when he was actually _around_ Remus because they would be busy or talking – they’d played some card games together, which Remus was good at (he’d promise to dig out his set of exploding snap cards when he was well enough to undergo the explosions of his particularly vicious set) and Remus had helped him with cooking. But the man was still ill enough to be spending a lot of time in bed, leaving him too long to muse over these matters.

It was his efforts to ignore them now, in fact, that meant he chopped the cucumber so aggressively that half of it fell onto the floor and skidded across the room. He was _supposed_ to be preparing lunch for Remus, who had taken to his bed again in an apparent need of more sleep. Sirius couldn’t oppose that, but he was concerned about how long it seemed to be taking him to recover.

By the time he left the kitchen with a plate of food, concern had been replaced with frustration, hair falling messily over his face as Sirius knocked on the door.

“Remus?”

He’d become used to whispering now, in case the man was asleep. The lack of a reply came as no surprise – he didn’t need to try again, just crack the door open and slip the plate on the table beside his bed.

Except…

“Remus, are you okay?”

Remus _was_ awake. Awake and fully dressed, sitting on the bed in a new jumper Sirius had bought him and staring at the window, his brown eyes wide and fearful. Was he seeing something that Sirius couldn’t?

Instinctively, the pureblood reached for the wand in his pocket, pulse racing.

“What’s going?”

For a moment, he was only met with silence again, but Remus suddenly shivered and sat up straighter, shaking himself off and turning to speak to Sirius in a whisper.

“Sorry, I’m fine. Sorry for worrying you.”

He seemed smaller, somehow. Maybe it was something about the way he hugged his knees to his chest or shrunk away from Sirius, who took a seat on the end of the bed and shook his head.

“You don’t seem fine. Did you sleep? You’re hardly going to with the curtains open, I can shut them?”

He’d already moved to close the cheerful red curtains over the window by the time Remus shook his head vigorously, looking so alarmed that Sirius realised this was probably more than just his tired state. It was a _problem._ He should talk to someone about this…

But Sirius was the only person he had right now…

“Okay, not shutting them,” he said carefully, raising both hands in the air and taking a seat on the chair rather than the bed, as defenceless as possible. This seemed to relax Remus, but only enough for him to return to his quite state of fear.

“I’m fine, honestly.”

He was gritting his teeth so hard that it was a wonder they didn’t just crumble into dust. And it didn’t take a genius to know he was lying through them, too – probably a habit, if he lived around men like Greyback. Sirius couldn’t imagine Remus having an emotional and fatherly heart-to-heart with the child-killing, blood-eating werewolf who was just about as friendly and supporting as his own father.

“You’re safe in here, you know that?”

_This_ was strange. Not just because it was a werewolf in his house, but because the last time these words had been said here, _Sirius_ had been the one cowering in fear on the bed, whilst James Potter had looked on with an expression of mingled fear and anger at those from whom Sirius had run.

He nodded.

“I know.”

Sirius had been about to ask what the problem was when it occurred to him – he was safe _in_ here, but that didn’t mean everything outside was necessarily safe. The street below could have any number of unsettling things in it.

“You don’t have to go outside either…”

“I know.”

Remus looked distinctly uncomfortable now, not for his dislike of the topic so much of a lack of experience with conversations like these. Sirius knew how that felt, though… The first time anyone he knew had _cared_ was such a shock to the system that he’d had a hard time believing them for a while. But James had been persistent as anything and had knocked that wall down.

“Listen… If something is a problem for you in here, I can remove it or find a way around it and you don’t have to talk about it or justify yourself,” he tried, leaning forward, “even if you need to switch rooms for a night or something.”

At that, Remus just _smiled._ But it was a horrible sort of despairing smile which made Sirius feel hopeless and out of depth.

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“I do have magic,” he pointed out. Remus, for perfectly valid reasons, seemed to forget about Sirius’s wand and how it could be used to speed up or ease any number of tasks. Remus had started peeling carrots before Sirius had stopped him and done the whole thing with a flick of his wand. “By which I mean I can probably come up with a spell to fix it.”

“It’s not important anyway.”

“If you’re saying that because it seems stupid,” Sirius said sternly, “then please don’t, because I’ve freaked out over such a large number of things that people would call stupid and have felt _way_ better for talking to someone about it.”

Remus _could_ tell him, right?

He didn’t even know the man that well. He certainly wouldn’t have expected it from most people, but it was different. There were things Sirius felt he could tell Remus himself that he hadn’t told most people, a bond of trust forged on the saving of Remus’s life and the keeping of Sirius’s secret, even at a great personal cost.

Maybe he just wasn’t cut out for it. Maybe it would take longer…

But the anguish on the man’s face hurt more than it should have done, perhaps quite so much because of how often Sirius had been in the exact same position.

“I don’t even know why I don’t like it, it’s so stupid.”

He spoke so softly that his lips barely seemed to move, and his eyes most definitely didn’t meet the other’s, trained to a spot near the foot of his bed, but that hardly mattered.

“What is it? I can take it out of the room, Remus, honestly?”

Again came the rather wry, tired smile of a man who had clearly tried to fight his way out of this one before.

“I’m fairly sure you couldn’t…”

“Oh no?”

Perhaps it wasn’t the time for it, but Sirius was up for the challenge – at least until Remus lay back on the bed and muttered a single word, eyes fixed on the ceiling.

“Window.”

“The window?”

Sirius’s head turned to stare at the window. A little dirty, not the greatest view in the world, but highly useful in summer and big enough to let in a nice amount of light. He had always wanted a house with big windows – they made him feel safe, as though he had an escape route if he ever needed one.

Clearly, though, Remus did not have the same line if thought. His own had to have been miles away, from the way in which he looked at it with pure fear.

“Mm.”

“That’s not stupid, Remus,” he smiled as best as possible. “Wouldn’t closing the curtains help? You won’t be able to see it?”

Remus shook his head with such vigour once again that he nearly fell off the bed and Sirius was forced to nod.

“I have a key for it, if you’d like that? Then you can lock and unlock it yourself.”

He had a bad, bad habit of keeping all the windows unlocked – and quite often, cracked them open to allow in more fresh air. When Lily had found out about it, she had been less than impressed, both about the security of his house in a war and the cost of his heating bill. Sirius didn’t have the heart to tell her he could afford to pay his bills without even looking at them.

“Well… I’ve made your lunch, but we could play cards if you’re not up for sleeping?”

Remus pulled himself into a sitting position with such determination that Sirius was sure he was about to be given an explanation for everything, but the following words failed to satisfy that.

“Do you have any books?”

So confused by the question, he didn’t even consider the fact Remus was wriggling away from the conversation.

“I have some old schoolbooks and a few bits and pieces… Why?”

He sighed, shaking his head as though there had been little hope in the first place.

“I used to enjoy reading.” He rubbed his fingers over the bedclothes.

Sirius’s eyes found his wrist, one of the places which still needed a bandage – the cuts there had been deep, clearly given to him when it wolf form, and the bleeding had needed stopping pretty quickly. He was still reluctant to suggest he could unbandage them in case anything worsened his health. Remus didn’t seem to mind having them on anyway, though he did spend a rather abnormal amount of time rolling and unrolling the sleeves of the various shirts and jumpers which had been bought for him.

Sirius leaned back in the chair and thought; Lily had a fair few books, but- And he didn’t want to raise the issue too bluntly – he wasn’t sure how well Remus could read.

“How old were you when you last read properly?” He asked carefully, wondering how on earth he would find something which wasn’t a children’s book.

“Eight,” he said, again not meeting Sirius’s eyes as he turned a faint shade of pink. “But I was taught at home and I was clever for my age. I was reading things harder than that…”

“Can you remember anything you like?”

Remus paused for thought for a moment, a light coming to his eyes half a second later.

“There was a book called _The Hobbit._ I used to read it with my parents, then on my own, if it’s still around…”

“Never heard of it,” Sirius smiled apologetically, but his mind moved to Lily, who might have heard of it. “Is it a Muggle book?”

“Yeah.”

“Your dad wasn’t a Muggle, though… Was your mother?”

Sirius was sure Remus had mentioned it before, but he didn’t want to go around assuming these things – and it was a good way of getting him to talk.

“She was,” he said, slightly wary.

Sirius smiled encouragingly and nodded.

“That’s so cool, I don’t really know any Muggles. One of my best friends is Muggleborn but she just mocks me for not understanding all the stuff,” he grinned. In reality, Lily would have been more than happy to teach him things if he could shut up and listening for more than a minute, so it was really his own fault.

“Yeah, I had some Muggle stuff growing up,” he pressed a balled up fist to his chin, muffling his voice so it became hard to hear, “mainly books, we liked books.”

There was a note of distance in his voice which Sirius had not encountered before – something between nostalgia and sadness. Something he knew, surely, was to do with Remus thinking back to a happier time, when his parents were still around and he, presumably, had lived a fairly happy childhood. It wasn’t an experience _he’d_ ever had, not when his parents were evil maniacs who had given him a shitty childhood and his life had become _better_ every time he took a step away from them.

“Where did you live?” He poked, pushed by curiosity and concern, “With your parents, I mean.”

“Wales,” he said, the sound still muffled. “We moved around a lot, after I was bitten. My parents didn’t want anyone finding out.”

It wasn’t much to digest, but Remus had opened up to Sirius more in the past five minutes than he had ever done before and it was _odd._ Feeling as though he should be explaining himself in return, he sat forward in the chair.

“It’s a bit different from me. I grew up in the middle of London with mine… House has been in the family for centuries and was in a really snobby area.”

At this, Remus smirked into his sleeve just enough that Sirius could actually see it, but made no comment on the matter. Sirius was once again faced with the feeling he had encountered when meeting his classmates from more down-to-earth backgrounds and they had been shocked – and slightly alarmed – to hear about how posh his upbringing had been.

“You wouldn’t have spoken to my family even if I hadn’t been what I am,” he said quietly.

“I guess not… But I never fell in line with my parents about that stuff,” he lounged back in his chair. There was no denying that Sirius liked spending vast amounts of money on drinking and leather jackets, but he didn’t care if he used the wrong kind of fork for a meal either. “They’re crazy, they always were. _Merlin,_ the day I moved out of that house,” he sighed, “I’ll be glad if I never see them again, or any of my family-”

“At least you have parents,” Remus stared fixedly at the window, which was hardly a good sign if he was taking that over Sirius now. “At least you have family.”

“Family aren’t everything. What if yours had threatened you and done things to you which you can’t forget? Not everyone has a family who loves them.”

“Well, I don’t even have them around to know if they would still love me now or not.”

Remus had turned white now, and suddenly Sirius was filled with the most horrible, sinking, guilty feeling, one he didn’t even need to try to understand. Swallowing roughly, he got up from his chair and rubbed the back of his neck a little too hard, desperate to rectify this.

“I’m sorry… You must miss them, right?”

Sirius wasn’t sure if it was the way Remus had been already today, or the fact that topic of his parents had come up again when it seemed to keep doing so, or whether it was simply because he’d engaged on a long rant about his own family at a time when it really wasn’t needed, but he had hit a wound.

Regardless, something in Remus had snapped – he was staring at Sirius with the look of fire in his eyes the man had not seen since before Remus knew his true identity. Except this time, his true self had caused it. He had raised himself from the bed slightly, staring at Sirius with a look which made the man feel as though it would be wise to leave the room sooner rather than later.

“Just- Leave,” he snapped, jaw set. Remus was still on the bed, but Sirius felt he might move at any given moment. Careful not to turn his back on him, as though it might worsen things, Sirius got up from the chair with baited breath, walking back towards the door.

“Remus, I’m sorry… I understand.”

The man leaned forward, gaze harsh and body contorted, as though his form was no longer fully human – or maybe that was because Sirius knew what he really was.

“I saw my own parents _murdered_ by Greyback,” he hissed, a muscle jumping in his jaw now. “I saw him murdering them when I was a wolf and I tried to _help._ So no, I don’t think you do understand.”

The door slammed shut behind Sirius, pushing him out of the room. He had not even been the one to shut it – Remus, without knowing it, had probably done some accidental magic.

But much louder than the sound of the door were those words, echoing in his mind as though they might never go away.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys, it's me again. Remember me? Yeah, me neither. This has been a while.  
> Sorry it's taken so long, I've been so busy with essays and projects and revision, but I'm still on-track with writing the fic, just not the editing :) There's way more to come when I have time to edit it!! For the sake of getting it out there, I edited this chapter less than I would have liked to, but w/e, it's just fanfic.   
> Thank you so much for the kind words and support <3
> 
> also, it's been a while but the previous chapter ended on a cliffhanger and this one follows straight on, so it might be helpful to read the last scene of that one for this to make sense and have more value!

That was it.

That was it, more or less, and Remus knew it.

Sirius had healed him and given him a home and a new everything, and what had he done? Shouted at him when he was trying to help and scared him out of the room. It was doubtless the first time Sirius had been scared of him since Remus had found out the truth and warmed to him. He had tried so hard to be _normal._ And he had blown it all in one stupid outburst.

Greyback had been right – he didn’t belong in this world one bit. He belonged back with the werewolves, back with people who couldn’t control their emotions. Sirius had saved his life and _this_ was what he had given him in response?

Remus caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror across the room and felt sick at the sight.

The concern about the window suddenly seemed so trivial – he wasn’t in danger, not from anything to do with that. The only danger was him. The only thing he feared was himself.

Sirius feared him too now, something he had to force himself to admit. The man had left the room with his eyes wide and gaze wary and since that, he had heard enough rumbling and movement to know that the man was calling for reinforcements and back up in case he lost control again.

And it was fair enough that he was.

He was dangerous to humans, just as bad as Greyback. Perhaps he was _worse_ than Greyback – he started to become close to them, befriended them and then shouted at them like this. At least Greyback had the integrity now to lie to himself or others about what he was.

Sickened by the realisation that Greyback was a better man than he was, the realisation of what he had to do now was only more damning. He had to go back to where he belonged – and fast. The minute it was late at night and Sirius was asleep, he would sneak out of the house and try to find his way back to the camp, heading for the south coast. Maybe he could try to apparate and just risk the potentially fatal effects of it going wrong. Perhaps he could find an owl and write to Greyback; somebody would probably be able to read it well enough.

The man thought him dead, but he would come up with some kind of escape story. Remus would keep Sirius’s identity secret – he’d try to stop Greyback from killing more innocent people, even, but he would do it on his own. Someone like Sirius wasn’t supposed to be around people like him, today was proof enough of that.

Remus tucked his knees under his arms and stared at the window, wondering how tonight might have been if he had not blown all his chances. Maybe they would have had that card game and cooked a meal together.

Regardless, he would never know.

He would only stay here until as long as it took for night to fall and Sirius to go to sleep. There was no clock in sight, but he could wait until the sky became darker and darker and the flat was quiet before sneaking out. He’d keep the clothes he was wearing and take a couple of potions to keep him going without getting too ill, but Remus knew he couldn’t take any more from Sirius. He was lucky enough that members of them Ministry had not come bursting into the house to take him away to prison, after all. Remus didn’t want to know what the cost was for a werewolf who threatened a pureblood human, but he was fairly sure that returning to Greyback would be preferable.

At first he thought of Sirius, at the look of fear on the man’s young face – his wide grey eyes, horrorstruck – no doubt from what Remus had said to him and the way he had reacted. But soon his thoughts shift onwards. Dumbledore would surely hear about this and even the image of the old man’s eyes filling with cold disappointment and anger made him flinch.

But then it moved on to warmer eyes… The brown eyes of his parents, who had always been so patient with him…

Would he have been like this to them, too, had they lived this long? Maybe it was better for them that they were gone now, better than the shame of having a son who was a monster, a son who lashed out at people when they had only tried to care for him.

The room was dimmer now, dim enough that Remus didn’t have to try to hide so much from the mirror Sirius had put in there. But he still feared looking up at it as he rubbed tears from his cheek, what he was sure was only the start of a build-up of dirt and grime on him that he would soon regain at the camp.

For a moment, he considered writing a note to Sirius to explain everything, to apologise and tell him that once he had known a werewolf who was not violent like himself or Greyback, to tell him that he would try to protect those whom Greyback attacked. But Sirius wouldn’t care to read it – all he probably wanted was to know the werewolf was out of his house, no longer ghosting around the kitchen door nervously in the mornings or carefully arranging his towel on the bathroom radiator each day.

He had just hoped it would have lasted longer than this. Before he’d messed everything up, he had almost made a friend.

_Almost._

Remus Lupin was really quite skilled when it came to _almost._ He had almost escaped not once, but twice. Yet every time, he would end up with Greyback again. Maybe there just was no escape. Perhaps this was just how life _was._

* * *

He waited a long time after darkness had fallen to sneak out. He had heard little movement all evening, but Sirius had surely gone to sleep now – from the position of the moon in the sky, there were still a few hours until dawn.

Once the decision was made, Remus had pulled himself off the bed and put on the warm, green jumper he liked so much – it somehow smelt more like Sirius than the rest – and tiptoed to the bedroom door. That was easy without shoes, which he wouldn’t be needing on the camp anyway.

He cracked the door open to meet with darkness – the room led directly off Sirius’s living room with its soft cream carpet, but the other man would be in his bedroom now anyway.

Padding softly down the hall, terrified to disturb him, Remus reached as far as the sofa before he noticed.

Sirius was sitting on the sofa, watching him silently, cat-like, his head slowly following Remus until their eyes met and the werewolf jumped, so startled he completely forgot about everything for a second.

“Where are you going?! It’s three in the morning!”

Sirius looked… Odd. Messy, almost. There was stubble on his chin, grey as the bags under his eyes, and his t-shirt was rumpled and messy.

The words caught in Remus’s throat – would it be better if _this_ was the last time he ever spoke to Sirius?

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, “I would have left sooner. I’m going, I’m sorry…”

He took a further three steps to the door, but Sirius caught him by the cuff of his sleeve and pulled like a petulant child demanding Remus’s attention.

“Remus? What’s this about?”

He blinked.

“Earlier- When I- I shouted at you,” he whispered, “I lost control. I’m _dangerous.”_

Sirius laughed. Sirius laughed, and it was the oddest sound Remus had ever heard in the morning – terrified, yet truly amused.

“Remus, are you trying to walk out of here because of _that?”_

“Yes. I’m not safe- I’m- I’ll go, I’m sorry.”

“If you have to go,” Sirius said quietly, “then I want to give you something first.”

He thrust a parcel at Remus’s chest, one wrapped in brown paper and some ribbon – it looked quite nice and it was certainly the first present he’d received in a while. Yet he was still wary – was this a way to slow him down until the Ministry arrived?

“Go on, open it!”

His hands fumbled with the paper so much that it took far longer than it should have done, but the wrappings eventually fell to the floor and he found himself holding a book – a dark blue, hardback book with swirling gold designs all over it.

“I- I don’t understand.”

Sirius, with an immense amount of patience that Remus simply could not understand right now, slide the book from his hands and opened it to reveal a page which bore the words _The Hobbit_ in curled writing.

“You said this book was important to you growing up and… I couldn’t really see Greyback giving out presents on that camp, so I thought I would get you it,” he said softly, “I hope you like it.”

Remus was utterly at a loss for words, staring at the book as though it might give him things to say. He’d never seen this kindness before, at least not for a long time…

But Sirius seemed to be prepared for that eventuality, smiling at him vaguely as he patted the sofa.

“If you’re going to insist on leaving, Remus, can you at least stay and read a chapter first? I’ve never read it myself and the man in the shop said it was really very good.”

His hands were shaking so much right now that he was sure he was going to drop the book, but he wasn’t really in a position to argue right now. Exhausted and confused, it was easier to do it. With one more invitation from Sirius, one which lulled him into a false sense of security, he found himself curling up on the sofa, facing an exhausted-looking Sirius whom he had never seen so _keen._

“Could you read it out loud?” He yawned, “My eyes are tired, but we could take turns.”

Was this some weird kind of power trip? He wasn’t sure, but the warmth in Sirius’s eyes and the way he smiled encouragingly and passed Remus a cushion certainly helped. And then when he opened the book to hear the crack of a new spine and inhale the fresh, new smell he had always associated with the comfort of words which could take him anywhere, something else became apparent. There, written on the inside of the cover in faint writing, was a message from someone who was not the author.

_Remus,_

_Because I doubt you’ve had any presents in a while and it’s nice to do something for a friend. Enjoy it._

_Sirius_

“You don’t mind that I wrote in a book, do you?” He asked quickly, grinning slightly, “Some people are funny about that...”

“I still don’t understand,” Remus whispered, fingers tracing over the pages.

“Just read,” Sirius told him, “please?”

Feeling as though the comfort of these words might be a little help, Remus turned the pages one at a time, licked his lips and glanced at Sirius for slightly too long before looking down at the page again.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell not yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit-hole and that means comfort…”

The words came back to him like a familiarity he had not known for so long – like a voice he had missed for years, like a smell he couldn’t quite place but which gave him such a sense of levity it was almost dizzying. His fingers crumpled the corner of the page and his voice wobbled, but he read on.

And on he read, and on and on because Sirius neither asked nor told him to stop, only speaking on the odd occasion when Remus stumbled over a world and felt slightly ashamed. Yet he did it with such grace that it became easier to ask.

And still on he read, through hobbit holes and caves, places far from here, all from the comfort of the sofa in Sirius’s living room as his throat became drier and the haze of the night gave rise to firmer, clearer things.

The sky was read when Sirius yawned and flexed like a cat, groaning loudly.

“Are you tired? Wanna sleep?”

“No- I said I was leaving…”

There was much less resolve in his tone this time, though. Sirius hadn’t been afraid to listen to him reading for hours – he had laughed in places and seemed eager to know what would happen at others, until Remus wished it could just go on forever, hanging between night and day, perhaps the last comfort he would ever feel.

“Because you lashed out when I pressed too hard about your parents?”

Remus broke eye contact immediately, drawn towards the red sky and wishing he could fly away from all of this.

“Mm.”

“If you think that makes you dangerous or somehow less human, you haven’t seen anything.”

“What?”

“Does Greyback ever show remorse? Grief? Sorrow?”

He shook his head. There were many things that man showed, but those three were not any of them.

“You’re not like him. If you’re thinking of going back to him, then all I can do is beg you to stay. Besides,” he grinned tiredly, “who else will make my lasagne?”

Remus fiddled with the page for a moment, staring down at the words which were starting to look fuzzy due to how tired he was.

“I want to know what happens to Bilbo,” Sirius pressed on. “The man in the shop said this is just a prequel, too. I want to hear all of the books, you have a nice voice.”

It must have been the exhaustion and despair which caused Remus to laugh this time, a shy giggle he could not help but let out.

“Have you see how long these books are?”

“Have you realised just how much I want you to stay?”

“Why?”

“Remus… You’re a good cook,” he smirked, but suddenly sobered up, “a good person. One lash out at a sensitive topic doesn’t mean you’re not human. _Jesus,_ do you think you’ve dealt with what happened properly? And I mean no harm saying that, because I’m a _mess_ myself, Remus.”

“You have all this. You’re funny and have friends and…” He gestured vaguely, watching a wry smile cross the other man’s face.

“Why do you think I keep myself so busy? Remus, one day I might snap at you like that. And I apologise if I do, but it’s a very, _very_ human thing to do.”

They yawned, almost in unison, and Remus sunk further back into the sofa with a shake of the head.

“Why did you get me this book, Sirius?”

“You’re a friend- No, I mean it. It’s a weird friendship, sure. I’ve saved your life and I don’t even know your middle name, but I like living with you.”

“I’ve not had a friend for years,” he said quietly, “I might be terribly at it.”

Remus raised himself from the sofa and headed towards the kitchen to turn the kettle on without even thinking – it was a reflex he had never quite lost from when his parents were alive.

“He says, literally making a cup of tea for us,” Sirius wandered in sleepily, blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape.

He stared down at the counter and shook his head, but the corners of his mouth were starting to twitch into a smile.

“It’s John, by the way. If we’re going to be friends.”

“Nice,” Sirius grinned, “simple, not stupid. Orion, if you care to know.”

Remus slopped milk into their mugs and passed one over to Sirius with a surprisingly steady hand, expression halfway between a grimace and a grin.

“Named so because you’re a star?”

“Mhm, a ball of hot and uncontrollable gas, my parents thought.” He took a long drink and sighed deeply, Remus mirroring his actions. “It’s been a while, though. Not that I like them or their naming choices. John is a lot more sensible than mine.”

“I think they wanted me to have a normal option,” he looked into his own mug, feeling as though he was becoming rather dependent on the stuff – he seemed to be making cups at every emotional obstacle they met these days, “you know, if Remus was a bit too unique.”

“Do you want to be John?”

“Nah,” he shook his head. Remus had thought about that a lot, especially over the past few days – he could have picked a new name and tried a new personality to break off all his connections with the past, but that hadn’t seemed right. “It’s not something Greyback chose for me, I like it.” It was about the only thing he _did_ like about himself and it was a right sight more interesting than John, that was for sure – though John was considerably less pretentious than Orion.

Sirius let out something between a chuckle and a yawn, rubbing his eyes and groaning.

“If I try to get some sleep, you’re not going to try to sneak out again, are you?” He asked shrewdly, until Remus felt slightly guilty. “I don’t want to lose you, so if it means staying up for six weeks straight, I’ll do it. I’m fucking stubborn, Lupin.”

The man laughed softly into his mug, shaking his head. Deep down, he still thought he should leave, after what he had said to Sirius, who had only been kind to him. But he wasn’t able to see Sirius as wanting anything other than for him to stay and whilst he thought he _should_ leave, that most certainly didn’t mean he _wanted_ to. The warm living room and the book and the cup of tea had lifted his mood beyond imaginable.

“I guess not. I’m tired too.”

“Thank Merlin,” Sirius drained the rest of his drink in one and stretched lazily, “I’m off to bed, then.” He moved towards the door with too much grace for how tired he was, Remus following with a sleepy shuffle which looked rather childish. “And Remus?”

He had stopped with his hand on his bedroom door, now half open.

“Mm?”

“If you ever do wanna… Talk about things, you know I don’t mind listening? I don’t always say the right stuff, but I do at least have two ears and some comfortable chairs.”

Remus stared for a moment, perplexed about why he was making that offer. But as he put his hand on his own bedroom door and crept back into the now lightening room, in spite of the tiredness and emotional draining, he felt a thousand times better than he had a few hours ago.

* * *

 

Sirius Black had made a lot of plans in his life. At the age of five, he had made a fairly solid plan revolving around a horrible, slimy slug from the garden and the entrance to his father’s study. It had not gone down well. However, he had learnt not to stop, but to plan all the more carefully next time.

At nine, he hatched a plan which involved him having his very own glass of wine at a family dinner party, carefully hidden from sight as he squashed between his older cousins. He hadn’t liked the taste, but there was something impressive about drinking the entire glass of horrible juice out of spite.

At thirteen, Sirius had hatched a plan to turn all of the Slytherin girls into griffins, which would fly around the Great Hall and made a lot of noise – because one of them had stepped on his friend’s foot and tried to break his toe. It had landed him in detention for a week, but there was satisfaction in the fact they were still finding feathers left behind weeks later.

At _seventeen_ , Sirius had made a plan to woo a Hufflepuff seventh-year into skipping his Transfiguration class and kissing Sirius in a broom shed for a rather long time instead. She had brushed her quite teeth a lot, though, and the whole thing was so minty that his tongue felt numb by the end.

But now, when he had spent years expecting that the world would suddenly make much more sense, the world had suddenly become a place where he was hosting a werewolf in his house and buying him chocolate bars. It had been going fine until- Well, Sirius had a habit of pushing his luck and dropping his emotions all over the place. Remus Lupin had not responded well, and Sirius had felt terrible, because it didn’t take much to guess what Lupin was now going to do in response.

So he had planned, once again. He had planned to rectify this, to apologise and draw him back in. If Remus went out into the world now, he might meet a Death Eater and end up dead. He might return to Greyback and gain the remainder of the punishment he’d been given, which would surly finish him off. And if he survived that? He would slowly waste away, starving on the streets for lack of a job or any real food.

It wasn’t just that, though, which convinced Sirius to run to the bookshop and thrust money into the hands of a shop assistant for the most expensive edition of a book he only hoped would still be entertaining. He had grown to care about Remus more than he cared about most of his fellow members of the Order. He wanted his recovery, his safety… His friendship.

After that, the plan had involved staying up until Remus made the almost inevitably likely attempt at an escape. Sirius, who had planned for his words to be a lot more elegant than the reality, had swooped in with the book and the reassurance until he had promised to stay and spent most of the night reading fantasy to a very tired Sirius.

By the time they’d reached their separate beds, he had almost fallen asleep on top of the covers, waking the next day only when he heard Remus making breakfast for the pair of them. _He_ had looked as though he’d had even less sleep as he clumsily spooned fried tomatoes onto plates for them, but still smiled as he did so.

Together, that morning, they had read some more of the book and started to tackle the laundry which was building up, until Remus looked as though he needed a nap and Sirius threatened to take a long shower. It was only then that he proposed the plan, something his mind had been working on that morning, because he wanted to keep Remus busy and wanting to continue living here. It had taken some persuasion, but he had agreed.

And that was why he stood at the dining table now, carefully laying out four sets of cutlery and staring down at it nervously, leaving Sirius in the kitchen for as long as it was safe to keep him unsupervised – which admittedly wasn’t very long, with his cooking track record.

Feeling rather as though he was messing everything up, it wasn’t long before he poked his head around the door with a frown.

“Everything okay, Remus?”

Remus had taken a seat at the dining table, looking very, very daunted. He already seemed a good bit healthier, but there were a strong set of nerves on his face, to the extent that he looked slightly ill.

“Yeah, sorry. I’m fine, I don’t feel ill or anything,” he added quickly, because Sirius checked up on his health roughly once every three minutes. “I’m just nervous about tonight.”

“Why?” Sirius said, taking a seat opposite him and promptly forgetting about the cheese sauce he was supposed to be making right now. It was quite obvious, really, because he was dragging Remus into meeting his two closest friends and that was probably _quite_ daunting.

“Well, you know, they’re important people to you and you think they’ll like me and you know them really well, of course, but I can’t help feel like they won’t like me. I’ve only met you and Dumbledore so far and you’re really nice, but not everyone is like that and I know I can hide it from _most_ people but they knew about me.”

Sirius blinked, surprised by what was essentially an emotional outpouring given it was _Remus._

“They like me,” he said, giving Remus an encouraging smile which managed to raise his mood marginally, it seemed, “they really like me, they won’t think I’m mad for liking you or anything, Rem. They’re the kind of people who will definitely give you a chance.”

“What if I fuck that up?”

“How?” Sirius laughed, “Remus, you’re nothing like Greyback or any of those people, you really can’t scare them off.”

“I yelled at you the other day.” He raised an eyebrow and spoke for the first time of what had happened that other night.

“Yeah, because _I_ was being a prat. Remus, I promise it’ll be nice. We’ll eat dinner and talk about things and it’ll be nice and if you don’t like it, you can play the ‘I was beaten up’ card the other day and excuse yourself to your room.”

He managed a smile at that this time, looking up and nodding, so his brown hair flopped over his face a little. “They won’t mind?”

“Of course they won’t mind.” He hummed, leaning back in his chair and looking around the flat - surprisingly and pleasantly tidy – Remus had helped him there, because they both had a habit of leaving bits and pieces lying around.

“Must be good friends,” he nodded, “I’ve only heard good things about them- What on _Earth_ is that smell?!”

Remus had tipped his head back and was sniffing the air in a way which reminded Sirius of a wolf, though he didn’t plan on saying that t any time soon. By the expression on his face, it wasn’t a pleasant smell. And it only took a few more moments before it hit Sirius.

“ _Shit!”_

He was up in seconds, speeding back into the kitchen and crumbling at the sight of the saucepan on the oven, groaning in despair. Remus, who had followed behind him, let out a sigh at the sight of a very sad-looking, burnt cheese sauce in the bottom of the pan.

“I literally left you for two minutes.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and pressed a hand to his mouth, clearly holding back a snigger at the sight of Sirius leaning over the saucepan and prodding the sauce desperately with a wooden spoon, like it might suddenly animate itself back to an edible substance. “ _Merlin.”_

Sirius couldn’t hold it in, though, letting out a laugh and dumping the saucepan in the sink unceremoniously.

“I should have just ordered pizza. I _can’t_ make lasagne, Remus. I’m _cursed.”_

“Is there a sort of spell to stop it being burnt?”

He had wandered over to the sink and was poking it, though a lot less hopefully than Sirius had done so, moving his nose to sniff it and pulling back with a look of mild disgust.

“Not anything I could do,” he whined, leaning against the counter and folding his arms across his chest too, “I would just burn it _more._ Tonight we’ll just have to eat _nothing.”_

“We’ll try another one,” Remus laughed, reaching down another pan and getting out ingredients once again, apparently unconcerned about what had happened.

Sirius, knowing it was better for him to stay out of the way, sat himself on the counter to watch the man cooking. Remus already seemed to move around the kitchen as though he was quite comfortable with it, at least as much so as he was. It was with a fond expression that he finally shut up for a while and only touched anything when the man specifically asked him to.

It took another forty-five minutes, but by the time the lasagne had been constructed and put into the oven, Sirius was feeling a flood of relief and Remus rubbing his forehead and yawning as he flopped into a chair, looking rather pleased with himself.

* * *

 

Of all the things Lily had come to believe in when the Wizarding world was revealed to her, werewolves had never been top on the list of creatures she had wanted to meet. Mermaids had been interesting, unicorns had made for a _wonderful_ Care of Magical Creatures lesson and nifflers had been just plain _sweet._ But all she had ever heard about werewolves was bad.

What she’d been told seemed to match the Muggle stories she had been told, really. That werewolves were men and women who turned into ravenous beasts on the full moon, who wanted to bite and hurt people. The Defence Against the Dark Arts professor had more or less said the same.

She had wondered, for a brief period, about what she had been taught. Not in that lesson, but sometime later, when a pureblood had told them that _Muggleborns_ were horrible and dirty. Which she wasn’t. So what said werewolves were?

It hadn’t mattered until a couple of months ago, until talks of werewolf camps came up in Order meetings and Sirius Black volunteered for a mission that most people seemed extremely scared of doing. She would have done it herself if it wasn’t for... Well, Dumbledore had suggested that the role was safer carried out by a man. She’d been ready to contest that point up until the moment James had gently put a hand on his arm and she’d realised why he had said that.

From then, it seemed unlikely she would ever meet a werewolf and find out whether purebloods were lying about them too.

At least until now.

Arm wound in James’s, she knocked on the door of Sirius’s flat with a mixture of excitement, expectation and hunger, the latter of which seemed to be shouting the most right now.

“Hello!”

Sirius must have been waiting by the door for him, because he jumped out from behind it with a huge grin and hugged them both so tightly that Lily nearly dropped the bottle of wine she was holding. It had cost only a few pounds from a supermarket, but Sirius and James (whose families both had cellars full of the stuff) didn’t need to know that.

“Watch the wine, Black!” She pulled away carefully, clutching the bottle to her chest and looking around the flat for a sight of Remus.

Sirius had given them not a _warning,_ as such, about Remus, but he’d told them that he was still recovering and was obviously a bit nervous about meeting people who he expected to hate him. Lily felt a little bad for being quite so eager to meet him, but she had pinned it down to a mixture of genuine curiosity and concern for a man who had been experiencing Sirius’s healing and cooking for a few days now.

“He’s in the kitchen,” Sirius said quietly in her ear, knowing what Lily was doing, “feel free to go and put the wine in the fridge.”

She smiled, figuring it would probably be easier for him to meet people one at a time than have them all thrown in his face from the offset, and headed towards the kitchen in the hope that he wouldn’t be terrified by her presence.

“Hi.”

Lily smiled gently as she pushed the door open and peered around – in fairness, he had been very ill only a few days and she felt a little as though she might be acting inconsiderately if she was quite so cheerful around him. When she opened the fridge door to put the wine in, the man’s back was turned, but he slowly looked around with a look of slight surprise and what was evidently curiosity.

“Hi,” he said quietly, glancing up at her with a slight smile and draping the tea towel he had been using over his shoulder.

Lily took a fraction of a second to look him over properly and found herself faced with surprise. She knew Sirius had healed him, cut his hair and given him clothes, but all the stories had still led her to think Remus would look sort of wild, a little rough around the edges, perhaps. But this man looked as though he wouldn’t be out of place in a bookshop – in fact, he would look far more in place in a bookshop than most other places. And as for wild? Sirius’s bed-hair was wilder than this man, who had apparently been doing the dishes – by hand – which was probably the first time they’d ever been done.

“It’s Lily,” she said, “you must be Remus.”

She held out a hand, which he stared at for a moment before shaking it with his own scarred, larger one. The woman smiled warmly at him and looked at the dishes.

“He’s not making you do that for him, is he?” She asked, somewhere between sceptical and amused, “Sirius can be pretty lazy, but if he bothers to look up the spell, then even that won’t take him too long.”

To her surprise, Remus laughed and shook his head, putting the dishes away at a height where Sirius would be struggling to reach them without magic.

“I think he’s traumatised enough from trying to make the lasagne, it never seems to work out well for him,” he explained, “I don’t really mind doing it, even if he can do it with magic.”

“I know what you mean,” she took a seat at the table. James and Sirius seemed to relish every corner they could cut for jobs like that, as though freeing up your time by doing everything which could be done by magic with a flick of their wand would suddenly give them a lot more time in which to be useful and productive. She liked to do that kind of thing, when she wasn’t tired or in a hurry. If nothing else, it reminded her of where she came from, what life was like for her family, and probably made her appreciate magic a good deal more than the boys. “It gives me a chance to think and do something kind of mindless for a bit, distract me for a while, you know?”

If Sirius had been right about Greyback, then Remus probably needed as much distraction as he could get. That man sounded about as scary as Remus wasn’t.

“Yeah,” he said in a soft tone, sitting down opposite her at the table. “I did it when I was younger, my mum raised me and she was a Muggle so I had to help her out the Muggle way unless my dad was around.”

“Your mum was a Muggle?” She leaned forward, interested. It was probably different for him, if he’d been with werewolves for years, but it was nice to meet someone who had connections to Muggles. For an organisation based on fighting those who believed in pureblood supremacy and the rights of Muggleborns, the Order did have very few people who were actually remotely related to a Muggle.

Remus nodded, leaning back in his seat.

“She was, yeah. I spent most of my time around her until I was eight and she- Passed away. I probably know how to do Muggle stuff better than I do most magic.”

Lily wasn’t sure if he was just like this as a person, but they seemed to be warming to one another. She and James had expected things to have been slightly awkward or touchy – they’d even readied themselves for some real conflict, but Remus was sitting in the kitchen and talking to her about how much he liked washing up. It was… Bizarre.

“You’ll be a nice balance for Sirius, then,” she grinned, picking herself up and filling the kettle, because there was no point in waiting until Sirius realised he forgot to offer them non-alcoholic drinks halfway through the meal. “He can’t do anything without magic. It’s not his fault, I suppose,” she leaned over the counter to peer out of the window a little better, smiling to herself. “His parents were a weird sort, bad weird. Cruel and sick but also just odd.”

“How so?”

“Okay, you’ve probably worked some of this out because I imagine he will have told you,” she poured four cups of tea, noting vaguely how nice it was for Sirius to have someone to live with again – she’d almost felt bad for moving in with James when it had left Sirius on his own again. “But they were very rich, pureblood fanatics who lived in a huge great house in London which had been in the family for years and they had a house elf to do all their work,” she nodded. “No wonder he had no idea how to wash up or do laundry when he moved into his own place, they’d just been done by a house elf all his life.”

Lily could only suppose Remus was on the same page as her, not them, in this matter. It hardly seemed likely that the werewolves themselves had house elves to do work for them and from the look of how thin he was, she doubted he’d ever had someone do cooking for him.

“Bit different from what I knew,” he smiled, nodding in agreement, “are James’s parents the same? Sirius said he was a pureblood too.”

She chuckled to herself and set a mug in front of Remus, shaking her head with a look of relief. The first time meeting James’s parents as his girlfriend – rather than as the girl he had a huge crush on and always tried to partner up with in potions – she had been rather terrified. And they _were_ posh, much more so than anyone in her family, where she still had to share a bedroom with her sister and they couldn’t afford to keep the house as warm as they might have liked in winter. But they had not been as bad as she’d expected.

“No, they’re nowhere near as weird or twisted. They have a nice house,” she thought of some of the accusations people had made when she had started dating James – mainly that she was in it for the money (to which she had replied that it took a lot more than money for someone to be willing to date James Potter). “They’re nice people. Just different.”

Which was what Remus seemed to be now too. Different – he had never been to Hogwarts, he’d lived a life none of them had lived. But she was more than happy to sit down and eat a meal with this man. In fact, she really couldn’t understand why anyone would have a reservation about it at all.

“Tea’s done,” she passed the man two mugs, “that’s Sirius’s, we’d better chase them down before they think we’ve done a runner,” she waited for Remus to walk through the door before following, her eyes fixed on his back as she tried to work out something which had been annoying her since the second she’d seen the man.

It took only a moment more to work out what he was – Remus seemed to be exactly Sirius’s type.

* * *

 

“So, how many tries did this one take?”

James was grinning at Remus and Sirius across the table through a mouth of lasagne. Both guests had given their blessing that it was good – much better, even, than most things Sirius had ever cooked. Remus was eating his slowly, savouring the taste of the cheese – he’d forgotten how much he had enjoyed it until now, something which seemed to happen with a new food most days at the moment.

“Four or five?” He smiled, having swallowed his mouthful. Beside him, Sirius was beaming, but it had more to do with the fact Remus was getting along well with James and Lily than the fact his cooking had been slightly less shoddy than usual, thanks to a _lot_ of help from Remus.

“Mm, is that because you made it, Remus?” Lily asked shrewdly, taking a sip of her wine, an action Remus mirrored, finding it much better than any of the things they’d had on the camp. “Sirius isn’t the best cook.”

“I’m not sure that’s fair,” he said gently, nudging Sirius in the side in what he hoped would be taken as a friendly manner – Sirius had done it only a few minutes ago, so it was probably okay for him to. “It was just a case of different things going wrong each time, but you did do all the bits right by the end. Just… At different times,” he grinned.

Sirius’s expression softened and he shifted his chair a good deal closer to Remus’s.

“ _He_ likes me. Why did I even invite you two? Coming into my house, stealing my food and insulting my abilities?” He pouted.

Remus was struck with the desire to do something stupid for a second, kicking himself to control the urge, because it was one he’d not had for a good few years now and it was scaring him. If he had almost done that to _Sirius._

Forcing himself back to reality, Remus laughed at whatever had been said – across the table, James had taken his glasses off and was wiping his eyes, and Lily was scooping her hair off her shoulders and over her back.

“Have you been out yet, Remus?” She asked. “We’ve had some nice weather recently, proper Autumn days, the park looks lovely like this.”

“Not yet,” he glanced sideways at Sirius. It was a discussion they’d not really had yet; Remus was both nervous about going outside and longing for it – if he ran into someone who knew him, or guessed his secret, this could all be up. But everything in here was so artificial and loud and a bit too warm – he knew he would feel much more at home if he could even spend an hour in a forest. “I’d like to, though.”

“We can,” Sirius said eagerly, “we’ll go to the park or get coffee or something. I think _I_ could do with getting out, definitely. So you must be going up the walls, right?”

Remus smiled wryly. He’d been a bit too tired to be going up the walls until now, but he was beginning now to feel rather crushed and trapped inside of this little flat. He’d already snapped at Sirius once or twice and it would only worsen if he didn’t have the space he needed… He didn’t want to end up being impossible to live with, that was already enough of a concern.

“You think I can go out? You think people won’t realise?” He lowered his voice, preferring that only Sirius hear him talk about this. He didn’t mind Lily hearing quite so much, but James was loud and confident and made Remus feel slightly smaller than usual.

“Definitely not.” It was Lily who spoke, smiling encouragingly at him and topping up Remus’s glass of wine, which he seemed to be getting through too fast, taking sips whenever he felt nervous or there was a lull in the conversation. The wine was making his ears slightly pink and the room seemed to buzz, but this wasn’t his first time drinking, he was okay. “You look great, Remus. People might look if they see your black eyes, but I can lend you something to cover those up, if you’re bothered.”

“Might have something myself, actually,” Sirius leaned back in his seat, “you could come to the Order meeting on Thursday if you want too, Dumbledore might be there.”

A little overwhelmed by the attention from people who seemed genuinely keen to get him out of the house and on a walk, Remus buried himself in his glass and drank until he needed yet another top up. It wasn’t long before they’d opened a few more bottles of wine.

* * *

 

“All in all, I think that was the most successful dinner thing I’ve ever hosted,” Sirius grinned, putting the dishes in the sink and abandoning them until morning – or three days later, when he would probably get around to sorting them out, if Remus didn’t get there first.

“Definitely the most successful one I’ve ever hosted- co-hosted,” Remus grinned, oddly light and cheerful and a little bit tipsy, from as far as Sirius could tell. He was carrying the dishes through to the kitchen with a lightness in his step and the occasional clumsy placement of his foot Sirius had not noticed before. “I’m a successful host now.”

“Successful cook, too,” Sirius smiled widely, nudging him gently and only noticing a bandage under the spot he’d touched. “Shit, you alright?”

Remus rolled up his sleeve, glancing down at where Sirius had nudged him – there was a partially healed scar and an oddly coloured bruise, but he just shrugged.

“It’s fine,” he grinned, “other people have done worse.”

“Strong arms,” Sirius hummed, pouring another glass of wine each for the both of them, which Remus accepted really quite readily, and lowered his voice a little. “Did you like my friends then? I’ve known them since they were eleven and I know James is a bit of a wanker-”

“They were great,” he smiled, hiccupping and sitting himself on the kitchen table, “loud. James was loud, but they’re good.”

Sirius watched him cup the wine glass in both hands, as he always did when he was drinking something – though it looked a little odd when it was wine. Remus had never looked more relaxed (or pink), smiling at nothing in particular as he glanced around the kitchen. The sight made Sirius feel… Odd. For the past few days, he’d been feeling quite protective of this boy, who had been pushed into a new world and was badly hurt, but now he seemed to have settled in, it was easier to see him without the almost maternal instinct. He was relaxed and happy and… Quite attractive…

“You wanna keep reading The Hobbit some more? I want to know what happens.”

Sirius, in honesty, had spent _some_ of the time whilst Remus was reading drifting in and out of a doze, but the sound of his voice was nice to listen to – a soft, Welsh accent which sounded so much better when he wasn’t angry at him, as he had been for the first couple of weeks Sirius had known him.

“Not now,” he smiled rather sheepishly, “I’m a bit-”

“Tipsy?” Sirius laughed.

“Yeah,” he gave a reluctant grin, “Lily offered to lend me some books, though. Things I’d like if I’d read The Hobbit.”

There was a light in his eyes, one which matched the one he got whenever there was an exciting bit in the book and he sped up and ended up skipping words and sentences out of his enthusiasm.

“Alright, sounds like I’ve got competition,” Sirius started carrying his glass through to the living room and settled on the sofa, which sunk down further a moment later with the weight of Remus on it too. He tucked his feet under his legs and yawned widely, catching Sirius’s eye until they were both chuckling.

“Feeling better now?” He watched the werewolf lean his head back on the sofa and smile up at the ceiling.

“Yeah, it doesn’t really hurt.” He hummed and smiled. “At least, not much more than it usually was.”

“I mean the- You know- You seemed quite upset the other day. After I fucked up.”

Remus blushed deeply.                       

“I’m fine. It’s fine.”

It was probably the wrong time to be thinking about how adorable he looked when he was that pink, but Sirius had to hide his face in his sleeve to stop himself from saying something stupid. Surprisingly, Remus – who had probably been drinking a lot more than expected – took a silence as a chance to carry on speaking.

“I never talked to anyone about them, really,” he picked at his sleeve, looking slightly troubled and pulling a cushion onto his lap. “When he- You know- I woke up the next morning and could remember everything but I was with Greyback and from then it was just survival mode until-”

“Now?” Sirius asked quietly, feeling a lot more sober all of a sudden. “Did anyone ever tell you what had happened? Or tried to comfort you?”

Remus shrugged, swirling the dregs of wine in his glass and focusing on the window again, though he seemed not really to be noticing it. But he didn’t stop talking, and Sirius was asking questions so tentatively that he definitely had the chance to change the subject if he wanted.

“I remembered what had happened,” he said quietly, grip on the glass tightening visibly, “some of them there tried to, I guess, but I was mainly told just to keep quiet. Besides, some of them had been through the same whilst becoming werewolves for the first time. I was lucky…”

He snorted – that was a long way from lucky. His parents had been evil and about as friendly as Greyback, but he’d not had to mourn someone in secret.

“Remus… I’m sorry.”

Remus looked around sharply, eyebrows raised.

“You weren’t there, it’s fine. It was years ago…”

“Aren’t you angry? How did you live with him after he did _that_?”

Remus toyed with the glass, putting it down a moment later and turning to face Sirius with a sigh, looking oddly calm.

“I had to… It was that or ending up going the same way as them in the end and possibly attacking even more people on the way, or ending up in Azkaban. It was live there or nothing.”

Sirius wasn’t sure what drove him to do it, but a moment later, he had thrown his arms around Remus, feeling the stiff body in his arms slowly and unsurely relax into the hug – only, he knew, because of the amount of alcohol he had inside of him.

They’d not talked about this, but the thought of an eight year old child having to live with the man who murdered his parents… He nearly tensed up halfway through the hug, attempting to pull back but finding Remus had ducked his head into his shoulder.

“You don’t mind me hugging you, do you?”

Remus sniffed a little and pulled back, clearly making an effort not to let Sirius see his face this time.

“It’s fine. Just- Just not used to it,” he mumbled.

“When was the last time?”

“A few years ago, I guess.” Remus tucked his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, a position Sirius was sure he had not assumed since childhood.

“Who?”

Remus sighed, getting up to fetch the most recent bottle of wine and pouring himself another glass, topping up Sirius’s too and taking a long drink before he actually spoke.

“He was called Ezra. He joined the camp from another one which disbanded and- We liked each other, he was about the only person there who ever did, who ever made me feel good,” he whispered, sounding choked up. Sirius remained very still and very, very quiet, fearful of saying something which might disrupt what Remus was telling him.

“We were- Together, I guess you would call it. You know, like James and Lily are. We slept together, at least, and- W-we planned to run away from Greyback together,” he swallowed roughly, clenching his fist.

“What happened?” Sirius mumbled, hand pressed into his chin nervously, eyes wide.

“We nearly did,” Remus whispered, “He was older and braver than me, he tried to take my dad’s wand back from Greyback. We were going to have a l-life together. But Greyback caught him.”

The vulnerability in his brown eyes faded into cold steel, a resilience, a wall he had put up. This, Sirius was sure, was something he had been forced to put behind himself to carry on.

“He said that he’d been corrupting me,” he swallowed roughly, “Ezra got a similar treatment that I did, except- You weren’t there to save him, nor was I…”

He moved a hand up to his face, rubbing each eye furiously in turn and making Sirius feel as though he might start crying himself. He’d never had a relationship like that with anyone, not if it was like what James and Lily had, but he could imagine how I might have felt.

“Greyback said he wanted to keep a closer eye on me, but he didn’t want to hurt me because I was one of h-his-”

“His?”

“He bit me. He was possessive, scary… I’d mainly avoided him before then, but he pulled me into his inner circle and kept a close eye on me and-”

He shook his head, and Sirius knew that there were some things which were difficult to talk about, even after rather large amounts of alcohol. He put a hand on the man’s shoulder and shook his head, assuring him he didn’t have to say anything more.

“That part of your life is over now, you don’t have to live with him again and I know it’s- Well, it’s not totally over, because it still hurts,” he sighed. He really wasn’t cut out for this kind of thing – even James would have been better, but James wasn’t here and nor did he know Remus well enough. “But- Well- You’re not in survival mode anymore,” Sirius told him gently.

Eleven or twelve years’ worth of emotional repression was probably going to hit Remus right in the face and Sirius was going to be living with him through all of it.

But, as he looked at Remus’s pink, tear-stained cheeks and red eyes, he realised that he didn’t want the man anywhere else.

* * *

 

The window wasn’t so bad this time, not as Remus slipped between the sheets and propped himself up against the pillows to change his jumper for the pyjama shirt he tended to wear in bed. Perhaps it was linked to the amount he had been drinking; his fingers were fumbling over the buttons and the rest of his clothes lay sloppily on the floor, not even draped over the chair as he usually did.

None of that really seemed to matter right now, though.

Sirius had ripped back the bandage on wounds he had forgotten about, wounds which had been left to fester for years. He’d needed it, he supposed, but he felt as though he had been winded, hit in the stomach over and over until he wasn’t really sure who he had become. He’d _lived_ with the man who had murdered his parents, his boyfriend and had ruined his life so much there were times he may as well have been murdered instead… 

And he’d just _lived_ with him, in utter contempt of that fact, of his parents’ memories. Sirius had called it survival mode, doing what he had to do to stay alive until he could get out of the situation. And maybe that was what it was, because now he was away from it, Greyback’s behaviour seemed more deplorable every day, what Remus had sat through and _allowed_ to happen equally so.

Only a few days ago, he had insisted that he should go back, that he wouldn’t fit in here as well as he would here. But going back now, returning to the man who ate victims and spent his nights hunting? Remus gripped his bedsheets tightly, as though fearing someone might take them away from him. He didn’t fit in too well here either, but he definitely wanted to enough to give it a damn good shot.

The covers over his head (they did offer some distraction from the window, after all), he found himself in a nest of warmth and the smell of Sirius’s laundry potion (even if he didn’t use it nearly as much as he was supposed to). He didn’t want to move from here, not for anything. Here without Greyback, in his room, in Sirius’s house where he wasn’t constantly threatened or force to remain quiet if other people wanted to eat…

He wasn’t cold, but he shivered.

Somewhere inside him, the anger was starting to rise up, anger which had been packed so tightly under fear that it was never truly able to surface. He was angry at Greyback all the time, sure, but this was the anger of a man who had lost everything to him and had it laughed in his face in front of others, daring him to respond.

But now it was bubbling, simmering, faster and faster until he knew it would hit boiling point and-

_He wanted him dead._

Palms sweaty, Remus pulled away from the duvet – he had almost ripped it to shreds, not realising how breathless and dizzy he was. _Now_ the window offered the cool night air – he wrenched it open, gulping lungfuls until both feet seemed a little steadier on the ground and he was safe to pad softly back to bed, feeling as though he had just run miles.

_That_ wasn’t something he wanted Sirius to see, if he could help it. The tears were one thing, but the anger and the images on the inside of his mind – the things Greyback had done, had tried to do, the things Remus wanted to do with Greyback – things that were a long time coming…

Had he just not _felt_ when he was in that so-called survival mode? Looking back (if it had even been long enough for him to do that), he could remember anger, but blunted, dulled by long feelings of bleakness, a need to continue walking in the same direction even when it was taking him nowhere. The short time with Ezra had meant something, a patch of gold in a long blur of grey, but he had thought that feeling long gone until…

His stomach squirmed and Remus knew he had to push that feeling away. Amongst all the anger, the fear, it was almost like a breath of air, but he couldn’t go feeling things like _that_ about someone like _him._

Remus swallowed back that feeling roughly, knowing it was far too dangerous, knowing it could easily get him kicked out of this new life he had been offered. He was good at pushing those things down, it seemed.

But Sirius didn’t make it easy, with his grinning and his hugs and his words of comfort…

Remus buried his head in his pillow. This was ridiculous – he was exhausted and hurting and completely, utterly unable to get over the fact that he _desperately_ wanted to kiss Sirius Black.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this has taken so long! I'm still up to date with writing it but exam season is killing me. Soon it'll be summer though.  
> (Also, I've massively scaled back my editing process to get this out because if I had to edit it like usual, I'd just... Never do it, so I hope it's okay)  
> This chapter feels a bit slow but there's some pretty interesting stuff coming up and what I'm writing currently is very interesting! (and horrible to Remus hahahahhhahaa)

Sirius had only spent a few months living on his own in the flat between James moving out and Remus moving it, but they had been more than lonely. For starters, it was horrible not to live with James, whom he had been sharing a room with for over seven years now. But not having anyone _at all_ to keep him busy made the whole thing even weirder. He’d even invited Pete to move in, but the man had been oddly reluctant to and he was more of a last resort for Sirius anyway, the kind of housemate who would spill things and steal his food.

For several weeks in a row, Sirius had spent his evenings wandering around that flat whenever James and Lily needed a night alone together (which he didn’t really understand) and he didn’t have a date, or something to do for the Order.

That was probably why he had invited so many people back to the flat, after nights out, having just enough to drink so as not to think about what he was doing too deeply. He’d wake up the next morning, of course, beside a stranger, aching and sometimes rather awkward about what they had been doing the night before, but it stopped the loneliness for a while, at least until he had been sent away from people for weeks and found himself living with the werewolves, longing for a chance to be alone from things.

Remus, it turned out, was the right kind of company he needed at the moment. He was much quieter than James had been and never suggested some of the stupid things they did together, things he missed doing. But it was nice how he walked softly through the house, curled up on his chairs with a book and always seemed happy to hold a conversation, even if it did come with an air of being shocked that Sirius actually liked him.

To start with, Remus had just been a kind of colleague he was looking after, healing him for the Order. But after some of the things he had told him about, it was becoming more like a friendship… Sirius had hugged Remus for the first time the other night and had found him hugging back tentatively. Going from a man who was used to harsh touches to being ready to hug made Sirius fairly sure he trusted him.

So he would have to trust him today, because it was reaching the point where both of them needed to leave the house. Sirius had planned to take him out for a small shopping trip (Remus had seemed a little daunted, but had agreed to go) and to take him to somewhere that he could get some fresh air – he had seemed almost excited at that – and he couldn’t blame him, either. The man hadn’t left the house for a good few days and Sirius had spotted him lingering around open windows as though he was desperately trying to get the fresh air into his lungs.

Now, though, they were practically ready to leave – Sirius was shrugging on a leather jacket whilst Remus checked himself in the bathroom mirror for the tenth time, nervously fussing over his appearance. As far as he was concerned, Remus looked great, but he couldn’t criticise him about that…

“You ready, Remus?” He poked his head around the door, nervously eyeing the grey clouds through the window. “You look great.”

“I guess so…” He stepped out, rolling down the sleeves of his jumper and smiling nervously, practically jumping towards the door and letting himself out – it was a good sign, if he was comfortable doing that himself. It was taking Remus a long time to learn to be confident doing things like that – sometimes he still wavered around the furniture, until Sirius pulled him back down onto the sofa with a gentle touch.

“You know, I’ll get you a key cut today and then you can go out whenever you want, if I’m busy or not in the mood. You might like the park. It’s not the _same_ as the forest, but it does have a good deal of fresh air.”

Remus stuck his hands into his pockets and smiled to himself, looking pleased. “Thanks… I’m not sure I’ll be great going out by myself yet, but maybe in a bit.”

“How come?”

“Come on,” he smiled a little as they made their way down the stairs in Sirius’s block, “can you imagine me in a shop? I’ll be so overwhelmed, Sirius. I wouldn’t know what to do and if something happened and I don’t have magic…”

“Nor do most of the people in these shops,” he pointed out, “I was thinking Muggle shops today, just so you can get some clothes and stuff for your room,” Sirius grinned. He would probably be little better than Remus in a Muggle shop, so they could just muddle through it together if they had to. “We can go to Diagon Alley if you want?”

The werewolf wavered, staring at the street around them as they came out of the door. To Sirius, it all looked so _normal –_ but that was probably what caused Remus to stare at it for so long, because he had known anything _but_ for the past few years.

“Changed a lot since I was last somewhere like this,” he chuckled, “though I was in rural Wales and not in a city. It just looks so… Modern. Nicer, though. And… Diagon Alley would be nice, but I don’t need anything from there.”

“Your wand?” Sirius suggested eagerly. He deeply wanted to get Remus’s father’s wand back from Greyback, but these things took small steps. First it would just be the case of getting him his own wand to practise with whilst they waited until the time was right.

“Hey, woah, no,” Remus stopped beside a post-box (which Sirius examined curiously, eyebrows raised – he usually ignored it), “you can’t get me a wand. They’re _expensive._  I can’t even do magic…”

“Surely you’d like to learn?”

“Isn’t it a bit late?”

“Some people argue eleven is way too young to start learning, that’s anyone’s opinion, Remus. I’ll help teach you some stuff, and Lily can,” he added, thinking she would be much more patient and a far better teacher. He’d never exactly been good at teaching people things, with the slight exception of Regulus, who had always listened to what he had said even when it was impossible to follow.

Apparently convinced by that offer, Remus nodded and smiled reluctantly – he supposed it was an opportunity he had never had, learning how to control his magic. “I’d love to, if it’s really not a problem.”

“Actually, it’ll be the opposite of a problem, it’ll be really useful for the Order. And we won’t make you learn the boring or shitty bits of magic, like Potions or History of Magic.” He yawned just _thinking_ of those lessons, the ones which had sent him to sleep every single time he had to suffer through one.

“I’d like to learn everything, actually,” Remus smiled apologetically. He didn’t blame him – at the start of his Hogwarts days, Sirius had been just as keen, even when he’d been forced to learn from a tutor who made him incredibly bored for years before going off to school. “I get you don’t have time, but I could learn some things from a book?”

“You’re so keen,” Sirius sighed, “where were you when I was twelve and wanted someone’s homework to copy, eh?” He nudged Remus in the side, earning a smile – which was a relief, because it was a bit of a touchy subject, the fact Remus didn’t have parents, or a Hogwarts education.

As it happened, he was wondering where Remus _had_ been when they were twelve – with the werewolves, obviously, but what did he do? The children on the camp who tried to play like kids were supposed to have been shushed and told to hide, so he doubted it had been a case of running around and having fun. But eleven was _very_ young to be doing anything with Greyback, surely, when he couldn’t really seem to stand children being around him. There had been little to do when Sirius had been there with an actual mission, let alone for a bored child…

But Remus seemed to have noticed the curiosity in his tone, however subtle, and decided to satisfy him with an answer.

“Learning to climb trees, mainly,” he smiled, “I spent a good few years up trees most of the time.”

Sirius moaned quietly, envious. He’d been caught trying to do exactly that once and had ended up in a tremendous amount of trouble with his parents. He had tried at Hogwarts, too, but a fair few members of staff had put in a good effort to prevent him from even getting as far as the Forbidden Forest, making it quite difficult.

“Can you still do it?”

“Yeah,” Remus smiled, a smile Sirius supposed came from the fact that there was actually something he could do which was of value in his world – true, it wasn’t particularly useful, but Sirius definitely wanted to learn how. “Better now, I’m not as light, but I’m better at judging what will take my weight and I have longer arms and legs to reach for higher branches.”

“Will you teach me?”

“Will you promise not to break too many bones? I’m not sure I’d know how to heal you.”

“Deal,” Sirius grinned, a skip in his step.

They made their way into the first shop in a comfortable silence, Sirius sizing up the trees as though looking for one which might be good to climb and Remus looking at their surroundings with interest, slightly overwhelmed to find himself surrounded by rails and rails of brightly coloured, brand-new clothes. In his pocket, Sirius fiddled with the Muggle money Lily he had exchanged the other day, hoping it would be enough for Remus to buy some clothes.

The man trailed through the shop, apparently looking at every single thing – sometimes running his fingers over their fabric in vague interest – and picking up absolutely nothing. By the time Sirius had helped himself to a new jacket, a pair of jeans and a shirt, he found himself turning to Remus.

“We are here for you, Remus. Pick whatever you want, you do _need_ it.” He didn’t fancy the idea of doing laundry at a rate to satisfy the very few items of clothing the other man currently owned. “Come on, let’s start with jeans or something. You’ll probably need to try them on, I guess…”

Looking rather daunted, Remus approached the nearest stand and pulled off a pair of jeans after a moment of thought. From the look of it, this was going to take a long time…

* * *

 

“Sirius?”

“Yeah?”

Sirius turned around from the till with even more bags in hand, these new ones containing shoes for Remus – boots and slippers and smart shoes for no real reason other than the fact Sirius had told him to buy them.

“I’m tired.”

They’d been shopping for a good few hours now, and whilst it was nice to get new things and interesting to look at everything, his was feeling overwhelmed and in need of somewhere quiet and calm to sit for a while. His own arms had been holding bags for hours and, strong as he might be, they somehow seemed to hurt more than most things he carried.

The pureblood’s expression immediately changed; he actually slowed down as they walked towards the door of the shop, full of concern.

“Of course, sorry, I’ve been dragging you round for hours…”

“I can walk,” Remus smiled a bit, “It’s just all very…”

He wasn’t sure how to explain that he’d been wary and on-guard for hours, fearing someone would recognise him, or he would somehow mess up, or Greyback would materialise in the middle of a shopping centre.

“It’s fine,” Sirius assured him in a soft tone, “I think I know somewhere you might like, if you don’t want to go home just yet…”

Remus, not wanting to admit that he was perfectly happy to go home right now, though it would be sad to miss the opportunity to be _properly_ outside and not in a shop with artificial lighting and too many people, nodded so as not to disappoint him.

Sirius, filled with a new enthusiasm, hurried down several little alleyways which felt more at home to Remus for their dank and miserable nature, before showing him to a door with an expectant smile.

Giving it a gentle push, he stepped inside to hear the sound of a bell ringing. But it wasn’t that which he noticed so much as the smell – the smell of _books,_ books lining all the walls in the shop from floor to ceiling. Old, heavy books and shiny new paperbacks, Bibles and atlases and picture books for children. He failed to suppress a grin now, shuffling inside ahead of Sirius, who didn’t seem quite as excited, but still quite pleased to see Remus’s reaction to the place.

“I like this…”

“Thought you would,” he dumped his bags on the ground and pointed towards a plushy green armchair which reminded Remus of one in his grandmother’s house when he was _very_ young, one he used to sit on and poke whilst the adults talked about boring things. “Go ahead and sit down, you’re allowed to sit in here.”

A little tentatively, he dropped his own bags onto the floor and took the seat, Sirius disappearing for a moment before returning with a couple of books and dropping into a chair a couple of meters away. Remus had seen no sign of anyone working in the shop just yet, but he preferred it this way.

“Is this a magical or a Muggle shop?” He asked in a carefully lowered tone, taking the books Sirius offered him and looking down at the covers with a smile. “Poems?”

“Shorter than novels, we can’t be in here all day,” he winked, which made Remus’s stomach squirm in a way he hoped Sirius never found out about. “And, well, Muggles can get into _this_ part.”

“But out the back… Is the wizarding world?”

Sirius nodded. “If you’re going to go anywhere with more wizards, I thought a bookshop wasn’t a bad shout. Do you remember the _Tales of Beedle the Bard?”_

“Of course, my parents read them to me when I was young…”

“Same- Well, house elf, but same difference. I picked up a copy,” he waved it in Remus’s face with a grin, “pretty nostalgic. You read your poems and I,” he settled down in his squishy chair like a cat who had the best seat in the whole house, “will settle down with the tale of good old Babbity Rabbity and her Cackling Stump.”

Remus smirked as he smoothed the first page of his book and started to read, curled up in his usual tight ball and stopping only whenever Sirius laughed out loud at something.

Time seemed to slow down for a while, comfortable and warm in the bookshop until someone finally entered the room, a stringy old man with a couple of missing teeth and a warm smile. His hands seemed to be covered in something which Remus at first through was oil, but soon realised had to be ink.

“Are you boys buying this afternoon?” He smiled, “or just escaping the rain?”

Sirius nearly jumped out of his skin, turning to face the man and nodding.

“Yeah, sorry, we got a bit engrossed. We’ll definitely be buying, though. Might take a look out the back first.”

He exchanged a meaningful look with the shopkeeper and was on his feet seconds later, Remus following the two of them through narrow corridors into a room which was concealed by a door which also looked like a wall full of books. The place looked as though it was simply an old house, converted into a bookshop by someone who had a lot of books and old chairs and little time for anything else.

The back room was about the same size of the rest of the shop and didn’t look too different, though books seemed to be floating in mid-air and one of the armchairs had what a person in the know would recognise as a burn from a slightly unruly wand. Remus warmed to it – he might have been cut off from magic properly for a while, but he felt right at home here.

“Right, pick up what you want and you can pay using either currency,” he smiled as Remus ran his finger over the spine of a book on astronomy and plucked it off the shelf, flicking through to find diagrams of constellations and planetary movements. He wasn’t even reading it, but it looked interesting. “Have you been here before, son?”

Turning in confusion, Remus shook his head.

“Me? No,” he said quietly, tensing slightly. Beside him, Sirius did the same, his hand hovering over the wand in his pocket, but the old man was still smiling.

“Did you have a… Would have to be a grandfather called William? A Ravenclaw at Hogwarts?”

Very wary now, Remus gave the smallest of nods.

“Ah, you’re the spitting image,” he smiled, “I thought I recognised your face. William… What was it, now?”

“Lupin,” he rolled the sleeves of his jumper down and the man smiled.

“Yes, I remember now. He used to teach Charms.”

“ _Really?”_

Dumledore hadn’t told him _that,_ and Remus couldn’t remember learning from anyone in his family that his grandfather had taught at Hogwarts. Perhaps he’d never asked, though.

“Yes, yes. Not for long, but I spent enough time going to Charms club in those days. I suppose he’ll be gone now?” He smiled, taking several of the books Sirius passed him and wrapping them up neatly in brown paper with a flick of his wand.

“Oh yeah, long ago,” Remus nodded, assuming he was right there. He’d had three grandparents left when his parents died, but none of them were in very much of a state to track down Greyback and look for him – especially when they didn’t even know about what he was. “I was quite young, I didn’t know him very well, I’m afraid.”

“Well, you certainly have his face,” he smiled, handing over the parcels as Sirius gave the money over, “I thought I was back in school for a second.”

Remus laughed, but ducked away from view the second it was acceptable for him to – he didn’t want anyone staring too closely at his face when he still had the traces of black eyes and scars there. Sirius had told him to tell anyone who got too nosy that it was a Quidditch accident, but Remus didn’t really fancy his chances there. The second someone asked him about Quidditch himself, he would be completely in the deep end with no life raft.

Either way, he left the shop feeling slightly dizzy – overwhelmed and excited. A man had recognised him and engaged him in an awful lot of conversation for a stranger, but he’d also learnt a little more about his family in the process.

Sirius seemed to be focusing more on the latter as he made his way out of the shop, throwing an arm around Remus’s shoulders with a smile – Remus had to duck so he could reach, but it was quite nice, really.

“Thanks for that, Sirius. It’s a nice place. I needed it.”

The quiet and the books seemed to have restored his energy a good amount. Remus hadn’t imagined feeling quite so at home whilst being _inside,_ but there had to be an exception to the rule sometimes…

“I can’t believe he knew your grandfather and recognised you because of that! He must have been a _dashing_ man,” Sirius smirked.

Remus rolled his eyes and chuckled, heading back out of the backstreets whilst mentally preparing himself for the hustle and bustle of the main shops once again.

“I just hope he’s not still alive- Well, I do, but I hope he doesn’t run into him and tell him that he’s got a grandson going around saying he’s dead,” Remus looked slightly guilty, nearly tripping over when Sirius took a different turn from expected and he had to change direction suddenly.

“Steady, you’re alright. So he’s not dead? Or he might not be?”

“No idea,” Remus said, “I had three grandparents ten years ago, but they weren’t that young.”

“Do you want to find them? I mean, we could…”

Remus looked up, interested. Part of him was terrified – they might not believe him, they might think him to be an imposter. They _probably_ thought he was dead. He’d talked to Ezra about this before and he had told him it was probably reported that all three of them were killed and they never found Remus’s body – which was weird, because it meant a funeral had been held for him when he was very much alive – but the idea of talking to them was both strange and appealing.

“I suppose it would be nice, but I am supposed to be dead. If a strange man appeared claiming he was your dead grandson, wouldn’t you just think it was a horrible trick or a way to take your money?” He frowned slightly, “at the same time, I’d like to have some family.”

“Remus, you’re far too nice and too genuine to be a gold-stealing scammer, and you would have to have some pretty niche knowledge in order to scam them like that. We could give it a go? Look for them together?”

“Alright,” he nodded decisively, “probably, but I want to work out what to say first and I’m not sure where to start yet. But that would be nice, thank you…” He yawned softly, brightening up when realised they were heading towards a large park. It was still a park, of course, nothing on the sprawling forests or moors which seemed to go on for miles and miles and miles, but he did still quite like it – it wasn’t a tiny park, there was plenty of room for trees and quiet patches to see the sky.

“Mmm…” He sighed, the scent of trees rushing back over him as Sirius stood at his side.

“That’s it,” the man laughed, “I’m getting us some house plants.”

Remus smiled. He could hear his warm chuckle, almost feel his breath, he was so close. His sense of smell was more than good enough for to smell the cologne Sirius was wearing and the shampoo in his hair, but he was becoming used to it and it was pleasant – warming, a smell he associated with home, the new kind of home he now had with this man.

In his own domain now, too, Remus strolled towards a nearby tree and placed himself on one of its low branches with no difficulty. Sirius had to stand on his toes to reach to do the same, holding on with the look of a man who really wanted to be good at this and really quite enjoyed it, but had clearly not climbed trees before, not properly.

“You’re shaking it,” he laughed, resting a hand on Sirius’s arm to still him and feeling muscles beneath. Muscles and hair and a pulse, a little raised from the walking. He wanted to slide his hand down the man’s arm and take his hand, but there was definitely a boundary there. Suddenly rather shy, Remus slipped a hand into his pocket.

“Better?” Sirius stilled himself, looking around the park, stopping as he saw a dog barking at some birds a little way away.

“Much, I won’t fall of this way,” he said, following his gaze, “you like dogs?”

“Love them,” Sirius said happily, “never had one, always wanted one…”

Remus decided not to point out to him that he was practically a dog himself once every month, except much more vicious and dangerous and likely to kill somebody. Which led him to something he’d been worrying about ever since he was well enough to consider it.

Turning slightly, with the elegance of a man who knew how to shift around on a tree without falling off, he bit his lip gently, finding himself face-to-face with Sirius.

“Sirius, what am I going to do on the full moon?”

It was more of a loaded question that it might have seemed – Sirius had been okay with the werewolf thing until now, but this was a very real reminder that Remus was uncontrollably dangerous even when he had no choice, and there was no way of stopping it.

“Ah…” From the look of it, Sirius hadn’t thought about that either. As far as Remus was sure, it wasn’t something you could get around with magic either. “What did you used to do when you were a child?”

“A locked room and a lot of silencing charms,” Remus said worriedly, knowing he was a lot bigger and stronger now he was an adult. “I don’t think the wolf would like it, but I really don’t want to hurt anyone, but it would need to be away from people- I don’t know.” He sighed.

The good mood of earlier was fading away, replacing itself with worry about the coming full moon now. He had a while – weeks, even, but if they had no idea what they were doing, then that was no time at all…

* * *

 

It had to be said, Marlene McKinnon made pretty decent brownies. Sirius sat back in the chair and rubbed his stomach, groaning at the number he’d ingested in the past twenty minutes. He was supposed to be _focusing,_ it was an Order meeting, but the brownies had been right there in front of him…

“Sirius?”

He would have to get the recipe and make them at home some time, maybe he could learn to cook them as just one thing… Nobody else had touched them, but he had steadily worked his way through half of them by now.

“Black?!”

Moody thumped his hand on the table and Sirius jerked out of his cake-driven stupor, looking around to find the entire room staring at him.

“Is he coming?

He’d not been listening, but it was fairly obvious who they were talking about. Dumbledore gave him a significant look – nobody else knew that Remus was in one of the rooms upstairs, waiting to join if he didn’t want to make a scene of things. Sirius understood it when he said he was nervous about walking into a room for an organisation of people, some of whom knew about what he was.

“Uh- I can check,” he nodded.

“Who?”

Someone at the other end of the table – Benjy Fenwick, from the sound of it, had not been listening at all. Sirius could _head_ Moody let out a grizzling sigh from across the room, turning to address them at large – Dumbledore usually allowed him to take control of shutting them up, though he did it a lot more forcefully than the older man tended to.

“We have a new member,” he said in a slight growl, “Sirius met him.”

“I thought you were on a mission in the long term? They said you’d been gone weeks?”

“Didn’t work out,” he shrugged, though there was a steely tone to his voice, the tone of someone who was not up for being questioned about this. Every single member of the Order seemed to know a different amount about his mission and Remus, but Sirius and Remus, with Dumbledore, had agreed to keep what he was as quiet as possible for as long as he wished. “But it did mean I met someone who wants to support our cause, I’ll go get him,” he smiled, heading out of the room before Benjy Fenwick could open his mouth again and jogging up the stairs to find Remus in a rather empty room, reading one of the books he’d bought.

“Hey!”

The man looked up from his seat on the chair and smiled, though it was a rather nervous one. “Do you want me to come down?”

“You don’t have to,” Sirius assured him, taking a seat and leaning back in it, “but they have some very good brownies down there… And if you just deflect the nosy gits, then you won’t have to explain yourself,” the man smiled.

Remus looked a little more interested in the prospect and sighed, raising himself from the chair and heading towards the door, apparently needing no more convincing.

“I just have to do this, don’t I? I can’t get a shot at this life and spend the entire time hiding in upstairs rooms because I’m scared that people who don’t even know what I am might just hate me.” He pointed out, pushing the book into his coat pocket and smiling bracingly.

Sirius didn’t really have anything to say for that, other than that it was brave and definitely the right choice. Remus, he figured, would have made a pretty good Gryffindor. He was definitely brave, after being through everything he had and carrying on like this…

And this time, it was he who had to hurry down the stairs after Remus, managing to enter the meeting only once he was already inside.

And it was like he was a different man – Remus had taken a seat offered to him and had not seemed nervous and tentative as Sirius had imagined, at least not on the surface. Though reserved, he was smiling as people were introduced to him in turn, nodding and repeating people’s names. Sinking back into his own seat, it took a minute for Sirius to tell himself not to stare at the man’s sudden show of confidence. Perhaps it was all just a very good act.

“Just Remus is fine,” he was saying, smiling at Benjy Fenwick and accepting a brownie from him as they were passed around. Sirius, for a reason he could not quite explain, had to clench his fists in an effort not to knock Benjy off his chair. “And I didn’t actually go to Hogwarts,” he explained quietly, with none of the nerves Sirius was expecting to see, though he was rather softly-spoken, “I was taught by my father at home.”

Benjy Fenwick had been on the verge of making a response, but Moody cleared his throat at that and Sirius found himself feeling an increase amount of respect for the man. Anything to deflect away from the weird friendliness.

Was that wrong?

He _wanted_ Remus to make friends, surely? He wanted him to be friends with his friends, he wanted Remus to find some of his own bookish friends if he felt comfortable with that, but he didn’t want Benjy Fenwick to swoop in and be friends with Remus Lupin. Folding his arms over his chest, Sirius resolutely looked away from him, focusing instead on Remus, who appeared to be holding back from moaning as he ate the brownie in silence. He smirked. It was cute, cute enough to tease him about later…

“To business!” Moody cried out in a voice which made several people in the room jerk upright and pretend they hadn’t been on the verge of sleep or distraction. It was hard, though, when the Order was so small that it was constantly busy, constantly trying to track Death Eaters day and night. More than just a couple had dark shadows under his eyes.

“Sirius, given this is your first meeting back, is there anything to relay from your mission?”

Carefully checking the room to see how much he could reveal before he started speaking – which was about the only time he ever though before opening his mouth, Sirius straightened up a little and nodded.

“The protective objective was successful, but short lived,” he nodded, earning a look of confusion from some and understanding from others. Lily flashed him a small smile which made him feel a little more confident, which was what he needed when the guilt of ending it so quickly was beginning to settle in. “As for the other part,” he said slowly – referring, of course, to the efforts to convert werewolves to the cause, “again, I think it was more successful than we currently appreciate it to be.”

Moody’s glass eye whirled in his head to point at Remus. He only knew some of the matters of the issue, but he wasn’t an idiot and was old enough to have known there was a scuffle between Greyback and Lupin once. _He_ knew what Remus was, but didn’t seem to have a problem with it. It would have been a bit rich if he had though, given he was both more vicious and more scarred than Remus himself probably was. (Sirius hadn’t ever wanted to look at Moody’s entire body to check, though the idea of looking at Remus’s was less horrifying…)

“That’s the most we can ask for,” he said in his growl, glancing around the room warily, “Dumbledore, you want him to go back to surveillance, don’t you?”

From the other side of the room, Dumbledore, who until now had been happily lurking in the shadows, gave a brisk nod.

“I think that to be best for now. Sirius’s previous mission could have put him in considerable danger. Not, of course, that we aren’t all in danger,” his eyes twinkled, though there was a sadness behind them, “but it might also do you well to introduce Remus to the job. Is that okay, Remus?”

A smile crossed Remus’s face and Sirius knew that he was probably much more comfortable feeling a bit pathetic around Sirius. Besides, he wouldn’t even be pathetic. He might not have a wand, but he could just _pounce_ on most Death Eaters to keep them to the ground. The man was strong.

“Of course. As long as he doesn’t have to cook for me in this mission.”

A laugh erupted from most of the room and James turned to give Remus a high-five until he saw the look on Moody’s face and slowly lowered his hand. From the look of things, Remus hadn’t even been sure what James was doing, so it was perhaps an easy way out of it.

“Shut up,” Sirius laughed and winked at his newest friend, leaning back in the chair and frowning a little. “Where’s Pettigrew?”

“He’s been ill,” Dumbledore spoke this time, rather than Moody, looking directly at Sirius with an expression the pureblood couldn’t quite place. Was it suspicion? “Really rather ill, I’ve heard. We’ve not seen him properly for a while now.”

“Not since September,” James echoed – he, too – looked somewhere between concerned and suspicious.

But it was Moody who was acting strangest of all, giving Sirius a significant nod and what looked as though it might have been a wink, if he wasn’t totally losing his mind.

It only took until the meeting was over for him to work out what that all meant, though. The rest of the business went by fairly quickly, Moody assigning missions and tasks for the rest of them until their free time was in tiny fragments and even Sirius, who was doing this thing full time, was starting to wonder about whether he would truly be free again.

Once it had finally finished, though, the pureblood saw himself and Remus being beckoned to a corner by Moody from a shadowy corner of the room. Remus, who had been talking to Lily, jumped as Sirius tapped his shoulder and hurried along with the man to Moody and Dumbledore.

Assuming this was about understanding how well Remus was settling in, Sirius stood back to let them take charge, but the next few words Moody spoke changed that impression completely.

“Black, the surveillance mission was a cover up. We have something else for you two, something different.”

Beside him, Sirius heard Remus’s breath catching ever so slightly, as though the man was terrified of what was coming – and his own eyebrows contracted when, seconds later, he understood it too. Surely they weren’t sending him back, not after everything which had already happened to him? Fenrir Greyback was a maniac, it wasn’t fair to put Remus back in that place with him when he would almost definitely end up dead as a result.

“We’re not going back to the werewolf camp,” he hissed, “you saw what happened there!”

Beside him, Remus’s jaw was oddly set, though he nodded almost pleadingly with Sirius’s case.

“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Moody growled, “it’s not that. As you heard, Pettigrew has been ill for some time now. We would like it if both of you could… Take care of him, see to his needs.”

“What, because I helped out Remus, I’m now the Order’s nurse?”

Dumbledore, Moody _and_ Remus were smiling this time – probably because Moody had conveyed something entirely different in his tone which Sirius had not picked up on because he was still reeling about the thought they would want to send Remus back to the man who murdered his parents.

“We are concerned,” Dumbledore said softly, “that Pettigrew may be under some kind of curse, may have been _put out of action_ rather than just ill. We’d like you to investigate.”

“If he was under any kind of curse, he could just tell us,” Sirius said softly, “unless you mean… The Imperius curse?”

“There are things the Death Eaters knew that the Order has kept incredibly private. Things which are leaking out and destroying us. Pettigrew may well not be the source of that, but he is not as strong a fighter as you and only one imperius curse is needed, if it’s well placed.”

“Hang on,” Remus said quietly, “How can I- Can I even be of any help here? I thought maybe I could do surveillance.”

“Of course you can,” Moody brushed him off, “Sirius knows how Pettigrew acts normally, but he has also been his friend for many years and is a member of the Order, he knows. Pettigrew doesn’t know you or that you’re a member of the Order. We’d like to leave the pair of you to discuss this yourselves, but you may well be able to go undercover, Lupin. Disguise yourself as someone from the other side and learn what you can. If he starts to obey you, we’ll have reason to think he’s been cursed.”

Sirius turned to Remus with an expression of shock and amazement. He didn’t want to be suspicious of his friend, not in any way, but perhaps he _had_ been put under the Imperius curse.

Remus looked back at him with his mouth slightly open, glancing mainly from Moody to Sirius, as though he wasn’t quite sure how to handle being given such an important role in this mission.

“You think-?”

Sirius recognised that tone of self-doubt from a mile off, shaking his head and clasping Remus’s shoulder.

“Remus, if I can disguise myself as a Death Eater and be believed, then so can you.”

* * *

 

Above all else, it felt nice to be doing something and even nicer to be doing something he knew would be useful. Sirius had seemed slightly reluctant to investigate his friend for such great suspicions, but Remus had pointed out that if he had been put under the Imperius curse, then it wasn’t his fault anyway and it would be an awful lot of help for the cause generally _not_ to have someone spying on them.

So they had left the meeting to buy some groceries and make lunch (led by Remus), before setting themselves up on the living room floor, surrounded by paper and quills as though that would make some kind of brainstorming atmosphere.

Remus had sat himself on a patch of carpet, hugging his knees to his chest and staring down at everything.

“What if he is just ill?” He frowned, unsure how on earth this whole mission was going to work.

“I was thinking we could cook up some soup and I’ll deliver it to him later today, or tomorrow,” Sirius leaned down from the armchair he was sitting in, black hair flying over his face until Remus’s stomach squirmed oddly. “See if he’s really ill. If he _really_ is ill, then I’ll keep going back with soup. If it seems fake, that’s where you come in.”

“What if he’s just a good actor?” Remus squinted over a piece of parchment, panicking that he could not read any of the words on it – had he suddenly lost the ability to read completely – until realising it was Latin and he had not chance whatsoever from the start.

“He’s not,” Sirius grinned slightly, “they picked us for this mission because he’s never met you and I know most things about him. Ill Peter acts in a very specific way when he’s ill and when he’s pretending to be ill, I can see right through it. He tried it enough at school…”

Remus wondered what it must be like to have a friend you knew _that_ well that you knew all their lies and little acts from the truth, and pulled a sheet towards him – which was largely blank but with some scribbles from Sirius on it.

“And if he doesn’t seem ill and you think he’s been cursed then I’m supposed to… Approach him as a Death Eater and see how he reacts to me?”

Remus was slightly alarmed by the amount of expectation being placed upon him – not that he was trying to shy away from it, but he couldn’t even do _magic,_ let alone go undercover against some potentially very real threats.

“Mhm,” Sirius grinned a bit, “you can act, can’t you? At least enough to keep up a Death Eater persona.”

“Lived with Greyback for years,” Remus lowered his legs to the ground and stretched out slightly, “I’ve become quite used to it…”

“You’ve just got to be a dick,” the pureblood added, nodding earnestly – he had the added benefit of the fact he had tried this before, “turn up at his house and demand all cryptically whether he has done what he’s been asked.”

“And if he tries to fight me?”

“He’s not that good.”

Remus raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve not held a wand since I was eight, he’s probably got quite a lot on me.”

Distinctly awkward now, Sirius made a small ‘ah’ sound and dug into his pocket.

“Fair point, very fair point. Would you like to?”

Though highly doubtful he was going to learn powerful spells in time to protect himself against this Peter if it turned out he _wasn’t_ under Death Eater control, that offer seemed to scratch at his insides so greatly that he pulled himself up from the floor and nodded rather too eagerly.

Sirius, grinning, patted the arm of his chair so that Remus settled himself there, drawing up his legs enough to keep them from touching the floor, wanting to feel safe.

“Alright, I’m gonna get you to start with simple stuff here, but it’s all useful. And if you break my wand,” his eyes twinkled, “don’t worry about it. My parents bought me this wand and though it’s quite nice, there’s no great emotional attachment to it.”

Remus laughed rather nervously and held his hands out so Sirius could pass it into his hands. A sleek, dark-coloured wand, it seemed to tremble a little in his hands, as though sensing a new source of power there. Slowly, feeling as though he wasn’t quite aware of his own strength, Remus grasped it in his right hand and pointed it vaguely at the window, careful not to say anything.

“Loosen your grip a little, it’s not going anywhere. And put your thumb… There,” Sirius rested his hand over Remus’s until his own was tingling beyond what the wand was doing. Trying to focus on the magic, and not the fact this man had one hand on his own and another on his back, Remus nodded slightly.

“That’s really good, you’re a natural,” he chuckled, “uh… We could start with the Lumos charm? It makes the end of your wand into a light, so it’s useful if you have to pee in the middle of the night, if nothing else.”

“Okay… What do I have to do?”

Remus was perched so precariously on the arm of the chair, and Sirius so close to him that he felt as though he’d been shaken from the inside. It was nice, but… Difficult to concentrate.

“Literally just point your wand – a kind of jab, but not violent – and say _Lumos._ Loud and clear. It might take a few tries, but you’ll get a faint light by the end at least, I’m sure.”

With Sirius giving him careful reassurances like that and the wand quivering in his hand, waiting to be used, Remus raised the wand, muttering the incantation under his breath until-

“Lumos!”

“ _Fuck!”_

The had been a flash of bright, bright light and a huge bang from the end of the wand, knocking Remus from his precarious position and right across Sirius’s lap as the papers flew a few feet across the room from the force of the spell. Sirius was looking from Remus’s hand to the wand with an expression of shock, seizing it from him a moment later.

“ _Aguamenti!_ Shit…”

Remus only saw the fire moments before the jet of water hit it, but it had been burning rather merrily at the bottom of the curtains. Eyes wide with horror at the fact his spell had done _that,_ and even more so at the fact he was fully lying across Sirius’s lap, it was only a bark-like laugh which stopped him from crawling into a hole with embarrassment.

“One of the more aggressive Lumos charms I’ve seen, I will say,” he grinned, and Remus noticed how wonderful he looked at this angle. Even if his back was oddly arched, there were worse places to be than Sirius Black’s lap. “Are you alright?”

He handed the wand back and Remus looked at it warily, amazed he was being offered it again.

“I just set your house on fire,” he groaned quietly, “I- I don’t know what happened,” Remus mumbled, “I’m really sorry. Maybe it’s just too late for me to learn it, now that I’m an adult and things.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Sirius said it with such ferocity that Remus almost fell off the chair entirely, staring up at him.

“Remus, what you did was clearly _magic_ and it was with a wand and there clearly _was_ a light. It was just sort of… Too much magic,” he chuckled, “I hadn’t even expected anything to happen first time. It was like it was desperate to come out of you, so much that you couldn’t channel it.”

Feeling rather reassured by that – because that was _exactly_ how it felt, even if he didn’t understand how Sirius knew that – Remus nodded.

“It was,” he said quietly, “I didn’t realise until you gave me the wand, but then it all kind of bubbled up in me and I thought I was going to explode the house for a minute.”

“Is it the feeling you get when you feel really angry?” Sirius asked curiously, “Like you can’t control it, like all your magic is dying to rush out of you.”

Remus thought about the other night, with the door and the anger at Sirius which wasn’t really at Sirius at all, and nodded slightly.

“I guess it’s just that you’ve not had a chance to use your powers at all, but you still have them as much as the rest of us,” he shrugged, “young wizards have to learn to build them up. You might have to learn backwards, how to channel them down.”

Remus grinned, though it was with some sadness.

“It’s never simple, is it?”

“Never,” Sirius returned the grin, “but if it was, where would the fun be?”

The werewolf chuckled, the laughter loosening his muscles a bit until it dawned on him he was still very much lying across Sirius’s lap. The odd thing wasn’t just that Sirius didn’t seem to have noticed or minded, but how natural it felt. He was comfortable, not just with the position, but with the fact he was this physically close to another person, even when all the physical contact he’d known for a long time now hadn’t exactly been affectionate. Sirius _had_ hugged him the other night, but it had definitely felt very different than this. Remus didn’t have very much experience in the matter, but he was sure friends didn’t do _this._

And, just as naturally as he had stayed on Sirius’s lap, he pulled himself up with an unnatural amount of awkwardness, as though trying to find something else to comment on as he returned to his perch on the edge of the chair.

“Sorry, was probably crushing you…” He muttered, deciding not to risk it and sitting back down on the floor again instead. “You don’t want any broken bones.”

“I’m unsure,” Sirius leaned back, “whether you think you’re heavier than you really are or that I’m weaker than I really am…”

Remus managed a weak smile, rolling up his sleeves sheepishly. “Bit of both?”

“I can take you on my lap, don’t worry about it.”

If he’d had any more warning for that comment, Remus would have been able to hold it in. He was twenty, he wasn’t some child who didn’t know how to cope with innuendos… But from Sirius, it was basically _flirting_ and he found himself suddenly wishing he could sink through a hole in the floor to hide the redness in his cheeks that Sirius seemed to be laughing at now.

“Fuck off! That came out wrong.”

“You’re telling me…”

“I don’t do it in chairs. Not these chairs,” he winked, “they tip over too easily. Though don’t think I’m not adventurous if I want to be.”

Trying not to choke as Sirius just openly revealed the finer details of his sex life, Remus nodded, his eyes wandering to the wall on the other side of the room so as not to meet his.

“Oh, yeah? That’s-”

“Hang on…”

Sirius had cocked his head up like a dog, apparently having a realisation Remus was yet to learn the nature of. From the look of his face, a tiny part of his mind was telling him not to speak, but that part was losing because he was already brushing a hand through his hair quite nervously.

“You and that guy…”

“Ezra?” Remus looked up slowly. If this was going to be a more romantic replication of the dead parents moment, then he was going to have a very early night. But the look on Sirius’s face suggested otherwise. “Yeah…”

“Where did you-?”

The younger man arched an eyebrow and found himself smirking inside – it was either that or embarrassment, after all, and there had been more than enough of that today. Maybe it was time to get a tiny bit of revenge on the man.

“Where did we what?”

He widened his brown eyes as much as was possible, putting on the most innocent expression imaginable. He hadn’t really assumed it would work, but Sirius’s bravado fell away like an avalanche, giving Remus an immense sense of satisfaction.

Looking rather as though he was trying to come up with the right word to use, Sirius seemed to clutch at straws for a moment, before mumbling the word into his hand. He hadn’t seemed so shy about it the other night, so it didn’t entirely make sense.

“Shag…”

He looked excited to hear the answer, almost childishly so. Remus supposed it was due to the fact Sirius Black had been raised by strict parents who had maybe not even told him about sex and was used to comfortable beds with silky sheets for the things he did now. When he’d been with Ezra, it had not seemed remotely strange to sleep together outside, but then, they had done everything outside. It wasn’t as though Greryback provided a bed for couples who were feeling particularly horny.

“Outside, if that’s what you mean.”

“No… Bed or chair or anything?”

“Did you see any on the camp?” Remus grinned, eyebrow raised. Sirius seemed quite impressed. “Just outside. We didn’t-” He paused, licking his lips. Was he _really_ having this conversation with Sirius? About where he shagged his old, dead boyfriend? It seemed so, but the more he stopped to think, the more surreal it became. “-We tried to keep it to places away from the camp. Meadows and stuff.”

Sirius looked almost delighted by that fact – _he_ had clearly never had to think about the obvious problems of trying something like that in the winter, when it ended up being too cold to do anything but huddle up together and kiss instead.

“So you’ve never fucked someone in a bed?”

“Well, technically, no…”

It was odd, Remus thought, to see Sirius react like this. People hated werewolves because they thought them uncivilised and dirty, yet someone like Sirius revelled in the idea of doing these things outside. In honesty, he would have _preferred_ a bed for them – it wasn’t nice having to tell someone to let you up because a twig was poking your head really hard, but that was how it went.

“You’ll love it,” he grinned, “you’ve got to try it.”

Sirius realised what he had said about four seconds after he’d said it, which was long enough for Remus to drop the wand he was holding, hide the fact he had dropped it and stare at him, wishing Sirius could keep his big fat, beautiful mouth closed for just a few moments.

The pureblood took a moment to come up with a solution, but not acknowledging it at all – at least not beyond his face – seemed to be the route he took, clearing his throat and straightening up in the chair with a businesslike expression.

“Let’s try a different spell this time.”

* * *

 

Sirius had never really been awkward when it came to talking about sex, at least not since he was very young. His parents had raised him with next to no knowledge of it – as had James Potter’s, though his had involved a lot more nice metaphors about birds and bees. When Peter Pettigrew had started using slang which had the purebloods asking questions, though, it wasn’t long before Sirius took it upon himself to learn everything there was to know.

And thanks to the magazines and the parties and the bars, he had now reached a fairly confident understanding of what he wanted and how to go about getting that. Gone were the stupid little crushes – he could flirt his way into bed or someone’s phonebook, easily.

At least that was what he’d _thought._ But Remus Lupin didn’t have a phonebook and he already slept in this house.

Sirius hadn’t _meant_ it to happen. When they’d first met, Remus had been rude to him (at least to the act he played), dirty, smelly and rather threatening. After several discoveries from them both and a handful of showers, it had turned out that Remus was funny, kind and really quite attractive, the kind that was exemplified by the fact he showed none of the egoism of people who knew that about themselves and thrived on it.

If he’d met the man in a bar, it would have been easy. If they’d met in a shop, he could have invited him for a coffee at the very least (contrary to what people said, Sirius Black was not totally adverse to getting to know someone if he thought there might be some potential between them). But Remus _lived_ with him and it was rather had to suggest to someone that you were interested when they would sleep in the room next to you and share your bathroom the next day, regardless of how they actually felt in return…

Besides, Remus _wouldn’t_ like him. He talked about his dead ex-boyfriend enough and Sirius didn’t feel like he could insult his memory by being interested in him. Besides, Remus had enough on his plate right now anyway, having to adapt to new ways of dressing and eating and cleaning, with a full moon coming around the corner and new people to meet every day. Sirius liking him was an inconvenience he wasn’t supposed to be meant to deal with…

The man sighed, pulling off his shirt and staring in the mirror at his bare chest. He’d probably put on some weight in his efforts to get Remus to eat a lot (the man was muscular, but seemed to have next to no body fat, meaning it was slightly worrying to look at his wrists sometimes), but that didn’t really matter.

He _could_ go out and pull right now if he wanted…

He just didn’t want to. He wanted to slide into bed in his boxers and wonder whether Remus was already asleep in the room next door, with its bright red covers and layers of thin blankets Remus still seemed to prefer to the lone duvet.

“Idiot.” He muttered, throwing his jeans to the floor and deciding he’d deal with them in the morning – along with the rest of the dirty laundry scattered around the room. “Merlin’s shitty-” He broke off, realising it was difficult to yawn angrily and slipping into his messy bed, with its unmade covers and tangled duvet.

To think Remus had gone without a bed for ten years… Lily had once told him it was good for your back, but Sirius was quite happy to have four pillows keeping him nice and cosy in a bed which cost a little more than was probably reasonable for a twenty year old to spend.

Maybe that was why he sat on the floor, though, because he wasn’t used to having furniture around…

Sirius turned the light off with a flick of his wand so that the room was illuminated only by the glow of streetlights outside his window, with its partially closed curtains obscuring some of the room.

And why did he dislike windows? Was it just that he’d not had them for a while?

Things didn’t really make sense where Remus Lupin was concerned, but he liked things that way. People didn’t have to be _together_ for Sirius to want to be with the – he was a mess himself, even if he could sometimes hide it. Remus seemed to be under the impression that Sirius had his shit together, which was almost laughable – but also sad, if Remus was so far from that that he saw _Sirius_ as a good standard.

Remus had _too much_ going on for him to think about it. And their relationship was too difficult for him to make a move anyway… They lived together, Sirius provided all his food and clothing for him (which he was more than happy to do), he was teaching him… And Remus… Remus was teaching Sirius in ways he didn’t even realise. He had suddenly felt so naïve about the world when Remus had stepped into his life, as though his own traumas didn’t even cut it by an inch.

He _would_ though. He would take Remus, difficult past and all… Werewolf and all… A few months ago, that might have terrified Sirius away. But he was just a normal person.

A friendly, kind, funny person.

A _cute_ person.

An extremely attractive person – from the way his hair flopped over his face to how he bit his lip when he was focusing…

“Fuck…”

Sirius groaned into his pillow, not for the first time, but perhaps for one of the first times he realised he was seriously attracted to his new housemate.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like me, this chapter is short, gay and laced with anxiety. peace out  
> tw cannibalism because greyback is disgusting

Peter Pettigrew’s flat was on the outskirts of a large city, where the bins overflowed and the roads were filled with potholes. Sirius and Remus were both out of their comfort zones here – Sirius, rich enough to live further into the city, was unused to the shabby houses and graffitied buildings, staring at them with interest as they passed through. Remus, on the other hand, was cramped by the sprawling urban landscape, hoping that he would soon turn a corner and find himself actually facing some _trees._

Pettigrew’s street didn’t really provide. Both men walked hurriedly along the pavement, fearing different things as they stared down at a map of the area. Remus, who’d become used to reading maps for Greyback when finding new places to camp, had been pleased to have an opportunity to be the more useful one here.

“Left here,” he mumbled, voice muffled as he wrapped the scarf tighter around his neck. Sirius, insisting that it was too cold for anyone to go without, had bought Remus a coat and scarf for the winter. Though imploring on the man not spending too much on him, he was rather pleased about how they looked on him and grateful for the warmth they provided. The longer he spent with Sirius in this world, the more odd it seemed that he had once lived in weather like this with much less clothing…

“Are you gonna be alright waiting outside?” Sirius mumbled through his own scarf, far more wrapped up than Remus, “I know you thought it would be good to see it if you have to go in, but I don’t want to leave you outside for ages in this weather…”

Remus knew the comment had nothing to do with the weather as they turned left, dodging an overflowing bin and looking up at the shabby, uninspiring buildings – it was clear Sirius had a lot more money than this man. And that he was worried about leaving Remus outside alone.

If truth be told, Remus was in two minds about it himself. He needed to learn not to be fearful that Greyback would appear anywhere, and he needed some time on his own, if only because he was used to having a lot more time alone than he was currently getting. But these foreboding houses did make him feel rather trapped.

“I’ll be fine,” he assured him, smiling a little, “it’s a new situation, but I can’t always stick to your side. Besides,” Remus lowered his voice a little, “it’s a Muggle area, so there won’t be wand fights, right? And I could probably beat someone in a fist fight…”

“You won’t be attacked,” Sirius shook his head fiercely, “there’s barely anyone about anyway. I won’t be long, because if he _is_ ill, I’ll need to leave him alone. And if it’s something more suspicious, I’ll be pretending not to realise he’s fine and will get out of his hair anyway.”

Remus had stopped walking before Sirius noticed and turned around to smile at him, hurrying back over and looking at the door before them. With its peeling green paint and shattered window, it hardly looked inviting, but he wasn’t even going in yet.

“I’ll be twenty minutes, max.” Sirius promised him, “I feel like I should have bought a card or some soup or something.” He fretted, fixing the collar of his coat and knocking on the door. Remus, giving an encouraging smile, clapped Sirius on the back and gave him a slight push as the door swung open. Backing into the shadows, he settled down to wait for Sirius.

* * *

 

The knock on the door had startled him.

Peter had been knee deep in pieces of paper and complicated spellbooks, trying to learn hexes and charms his friends had been able to accomplish since fifth year. It was hard not to feel envious, but then that was why he was doing this in the first place…

Papers flying as he reached for his wand, Pettigrew held it in the direction of the door, wary, creeping towards it as his small eyes narrowed.

“Pete? You in there, mate?”

His chest constricted; he knew that voice, he had known it for years. But he’d not expected it now – he hadn’t even heard it in a while, especially not with what he was doing now…

“Dumbledore said you were ill!” He lowered his voice – even Sirius had enough tact to know not to shout about Hogwarts in front of his Muggle neighbours. “I wanted to check on you!”

Panicked, Peter tapped the papers with his wand and muttered a spell, managing to vanish most of them.

“I’m coming!” He squeaked, rushing away from the door and into the bedroom, desperately pulling on a pair of pyjamas and messing up his bed. The half-eaten, cold bowl of soup by the bed added to the effect without him even having to try…

Sirius or James would have been able to do this _much_ faster, but Peter was slowed, slowed by his stumbling as he cast a hex on his eyes to make them red and scattered tissues over the bed. If they didn’t believe him ill, then it was all over.

Blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he stumbled to the door and opened it to find Sirius Black reaching impatiently for the handle. He grinned, but there was something false about the smile.

“Wormtail! You look … Ill.”

Peter sniffed deeply, shifting backwards an inch, not keen to invite the pureblood in, but he was practically forcing his way inside, a presence far too big to fill a place this small.

For someone who had shared a bedroom with Sirius for seven years, Peter lived a very different life now. Sirius’s flat was large and comfortable, with more than enough room for an extra person. Pettigrew’s was… Small, dingy. It had the distinct look of a place which was inhabited by a person who didn’t really know how to cook _or_ clean, lined with dirty dishes and dust (though Sirius’s flat didn’t necessarily differ _that_ much in that way).

“I am,” he forced a cough and kicked a couple of stray spellbooks under his sofa, sinking into it and hoping Sirius would buy this… Then again, he was far too interested in himself to notice anything to do with other people, right? “You should stay away, you don’t want to get ill.”

Sirius shrugged, inviting himself into a seat, folding his arms over his chest and offering that same, slightly false smile again.

“Don’t worry about me, mate, I’m perfectly fit. I wanted to know if you needed anything. Any food or potions or anything. You don’t seem to have any…”

Peter froze for a moment, but shrugged it off.

“Thanks. But I’m fine,” he said quickly, “I’m having someone delivered some tomorrow, actually. It’s kind of you to offer, though.”

As far as he was concerned, the best thing Sirius could do for him right now would be to leave the house and not come back, but the pureblood had now wandered over to the window and was staring out to the street below, though Peter couldn’t imagine why he would want to stare at something quite so disinteresting.

“Have you seen a healer, then?”

The words were almost aggressive – Peter frowned, wondering if… But Sirius couldn’t have known, he was good at keeping his cover. It was easy too, though, when people like James and Sirius paid him to little attention, too caught up with their own cleverness and pranks to worry about him.

“Not yet…” He mumbled, “Listen, you can just go. I know the Order is busy…”

“Yeah?” Sirius leaned back, “have you seen Dumbledore recently?”

Peter sighed.

Sirius was like this a lot, making him feel as though he was being interrogated. It wouldn’t be so bad, but he _did_ have something to hide now and it felt as though he was being x-rayed. For a moment, it appeared the man actually did know, but a second later, Sirius had reached into his pocket and was pulling out a tissue to hand to Peter.

He blew his nose loudly and coughed once or twice.

“No, I’ve barely been out… I should get back to bed…”

“Let me give you a hand,” Sirius clapped his friend on the shoulder and offered him a hand up, following Peter to his bedroom. He’d suddenly become gentle and considerate – maybe Peter had _actually_ convinced him he was ill…

Besides, the state of his room certainly helped with that. Sirius smiled a little as he climbed into the bed and huddled under the covers, his sheets grubby and tangled.

“I’ll see myself out.” He said slowly, “let me know if you need anything, just send an owl…”

Peter coughed once more and groaned for effect, giving Sirius a nod and watching the pureblood retreat from the room with a flooding sense of relief, but one which was only truly confirmed when he heard the door shut and a pair of feet run down the stairs to return to the outside world.

Sighing with relief, he pulled the covers back and reached for his wand, feeling as though he should inform someone that the Order were checking up on him.

* * *

 

   
“So?"

Remus closed the paperback he was holding – one he’d been glued to ever since he opened it – and looked up at Sirius with wide, expectant eyes.

“Yeah…” Sirius sighed, brushing a hand through his dark hair and gesturing for Remus to walk with him, heading away from Pettigrew’s flat slightly faster than he usually walked. “He’s faking it.”

“So…”

“So he might be selling us out to the Death Eaters.”

Sirius was a little confused to see Remus stop walking to look at him at that, giving Sirius’s shoulder a clap himself this time.

“I’m sorry… That can’t be easy…”

If he was being honest, he had not even thought about it like that – he’d become so used to not seeing Peter that the truth hadn’t exactly been a _shock,_ not when he’d sort of known it for a while now… But Remus had a point. Pettigrew had been their _friend._ Their friend who was now essentially selling them all out.

The further he got away from the house, the more that wound seemed to stab. Pettigrew had joined the Order, he’d _lied_ to them and now – unless he was just acting very oddly for no reason – he was joining Voldemort and ratting them all out.

“Sirius?”

They’d shared a dorm with him for _seven years._ Two members of the Order. They’d helped him with homework and let him do pranks with them and this was what they got in return?! Was it him? Was the problem with him? His parents, Regulus, now Peter… Everyone around him seemed to be turning to the dark side and it didn’t make sense.

“Sirius?!”

He had stopped walking and was slumped against a bus shelter, his head in his hands. Remus was standing opposite him, looking concerned.

“Sorry… I’m- That _rat._ ”

The werewolf’s expression softened a little and he tucked his book into his pocket, apparently worrying about what to say for a moment.

“Come on, let’s get home. We can talk about it there…”

Sirius took a moment to consider the fact Remus was acting as a better friend to him than Peter was and he had only known the man a few weeks. Scowling, he picked himself up from the plastic bench and offered Remus his arm to apparate them back home, stumbling a little as they landed outside the flat and Remus was forced to lean against the wall for a moment – he still struggled with apparition.

A moment later, though, and he was following Sirius inside the flat and heading straight for the kitchen as Sirius headed for his bedroom.

He didn’t like Peter, so why did he even care?

But they _had_ been friends and he wasn’t even just standing _him_ up. He was putting James and Lily in danger, and Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall…

Pulling his boots without bothering to undo them, Sirius aimed one at the wall with a heavy throw, scowling at the sight of a photo of the four of them – him, James, Lily and Peter, stuck to the wall. He didn’t deserve that place any more, not when he was just as bad as the rest of them…

And it was just a reminder of Regulus, too, of another person who could have been something and just _betrayed_ everything which was right. Did Peter think people like Lily were scum? Did he want people like Remus rounded up and killed? He’d shared a _dorm_ with Peter and a _house_ with Regulus and now they just wanted real people killed. It made his skin crawl…

He would have to break it to the Order now. James and Sirius had invited Peter to join after Dumbledore sought them out. They’d invited in Peter and he’d betrayed them.

For a moment, he thought about Remus, the next person he’d tried to bring to the cause after Regulus and Peter.

But…

He shook his head. Remus would be better than that, he just had to be. He wasn’t living with one of Voldemort’s followers _again._ But the thought of Regulus and now Peter, shy, scared, useless Peter Pettigrew answering to dark wizards. Sirius knew he had probably not thought as much of the man as he should have done, but he was even more stupid than he thought to have gone this way.

There was still a glimmer of hope – perhaps he had been cursed or was acting weird for some other reason. Maybe he had fallen in love and was spending all his time with a secret lover… But Sirius _wasn’t_ stupid, he knew what this meant.

A knock at the door sent him shooting upwards, looking through to see Remus standing with two mugs of tea and a rather calm expression. He let himself in and, in silence, passed Sirius the mug of tea and sat himself on the end of the bed.

“I don’t understand,” Sirius clutched the tea so tightly that some of it slopped out of the mug and spilt down the side. “Is it _me?”_ He frowned, “do I turn people _to_ Voldemort?! I tried with Regulus. I tried with my parents – which was a fucking joke – but Peter doesn’t even have the excuse of being born into the family. We were _friends._ Friends don’t betray each other.”

Remus, who looked as though he was trying to work out exactly what Sirius was talking about as he listened, shook his head quickly.

“It’s not you. Of course you don’t turn people to Voldemort.”

“How do you know?” He snapped, regretting it.

Remus didn’t flinch, though, sitting crossed-legged on the bed and cupping his mug in both hands.

“James and Lily haven’t turned to Voldemort, nor have your other friends in the Order. You have plenty of people who haven’t, Sirius. Why would you fighting for the good side even turn people away, it doesn’t make sense?”

Sirius muttered something under his breath about his family, but he’d appreciated the sentiment anyway, slumping back against the headboard and running a hand through his hair, messing up work which had taken him a fair amount of time.

“Then why?”

The other man swirled his tea in silence for a moment, apparently entranced by the sight of the liquid moving.

“It takes bravery to stand up for what’s right,” he said eventually, “you told me that you were approached by people to join the other side, and that your parents were very keen for you to join. And you didn’t, but not everybody is as brave as you, right?”

Sirius snorted. “He was always a coward. But that doesn’t make it right.”

“Nothing’s going to make it right,” Remus took a long drink and shook his head, sighing. “I’m sorry, Sirius. I don’t really know how it feels, but he was your friend and he did betray you. I’m happy to listen to you about this, but maybe you should talk to James, too. He’ll be in a similar situation, won’t he?”

Sirius lifted his head and sighed – that was another thing which had been bugging him at the moment. Just on a low level, but one which was growing every time he saw the man.

“James has got so much going on at the moment… Lily and being threatened by Voldemort and stuff.”

“Sirius…” Remus said slowly, “don’t go feel guilty for talking to your friends about your problems.”

Sirius failed to answer, pulling a face which made Remus put down his tea and rather tentatively shift a little closer, until he was sitting on the bed beside the man.

“This Pettigrew sounds like a prick.”

“He is.”

“And what else?” Remus prompted quietly.

“A conniving, cheating, lying little bastard who betrays his friends and sells them out when they’ve only helped him in life. A rat, who thinks that we’re worth _nothing_ to him. You know, I was actually concerned about his illness before I got suspicious. He’s been playing us like we’re a game all for some stupid horrible ideology which wants us all dead…”

Sirius glanced across at Remus, meeting his wide brown eyes and feeling his cheeks turn pink.

“You don’t want to hear this…”

“It’s helping, isn’t it?”

“Well…” Sirius nodded slowly, but sighed again. “You’ve put up with enough.”

“If it wasn’t for you, I would literally be dead,” he told the man, prodding him gently in a way which made Sirius feel as though some of the anger was leaking out of him like air from something with a very high pressure. “Don’t you dare say that I’ve put up with enough when you’ve literally rearranged your life to give me somewhere to live in safety, alright?” He said quietly.

Sirius smiled weakly and finished the tea in one go, not sure if Remus knew what he was getting himself in for.

But when Remus held his arms out and, for the first time, offered _Sirius_ a hug, he somehow knew things were going to be alright. He wouldn’t be losing this friend any time soon.

* * *

 

Dealing with Sirius’s minor meltdown in response to finding out his old friend was most probably in league with the darkest wizard of all time had actually not had the negative effect on Remus the pureblood had feared. In fact, Remus, though not enjoying seeing his friend struggle, felt rather better that he was able to help _him_ with something for once, especially after the meltdowns he had had on the man. It made them seem more equal.  
  
After allowing him to rant for a while, Remus had offered to make them both a drink and they had sat in the living room with glasses of firewhisky until Sirius was cheerfully drunk and Remus excused himself to bed, feeling himself nodding off in his position on the sofa.

He’d been relatively quiet – apart from the odd drunken crashing and smashing – until morning came and Remus awoke to find himself curled up warmly in bed, the curtains still slightly open to reveal a grey sky, a clear sign that they were in the thick of Autumn. It was easier to appreciate, though, when he knew he wouldn’t be spending the next winter freezing outdoors.

As for his recovery, he was feeling a lot better today than he had in a while, drifting out of bed and pulling on a pair of socks to head towards the kitchen in search of a mug of coffee to have whilst he finished his book.

He got as far as the living room, at least, before noticing Sirius lying on the sofa, groaning at the sound of a lone man walking through the flat.

“Wha- Remus?!”

“Yeah, it’s me,” he said quietly, frowning down at Sirius, who was using his coat as a blanket and lying beside a few empty alcohol bottles. “Have fun last night?”

Sirius seemed a lot less intimidating like this, sleepy and tousled – his hair looked more in need of a wash than Remus’s did and there was a smattering of stubble across his face. Remus had at least bothered to change into his soft flannel pyjama trousers, too, but Sirius was still wearing his tight jeans and a single sock on one foot.

“Mm,” Sirius muttered, “ ‘kept drinking after you went to bed…”

Remus grinned, leaning down to pick up the glass bottles. He was used to werewolf hangovers, where people were aggressive in their tiredness, but Sirius just seemed groggy and sweet as he shifted bout under the blankets.

“I’ll make you something to eat,” he yawned. “Just stay there and don’t be sick.”

Sirius smiled rather sheepishly and made a rather large affair of carefully throwing a cushion over the back of the sofa, which said enough.

“Yeah, you can get rid of that with magic,” he grimaced, not noticing the weary, affectionate look on Sirius’s face as he headed into the kitchen.

Twenty minutes later he returned with two plates of bacon, eggs and sausages to find Sirius sitting up with his head in his hands, groaning quietly.

“Christ, you’re a star… What did I do without you, Remus?”

“Suffer through your hangover until you had enough energy to pick up a pizza menu?” He smirked a little, putting their plates on the coffee table and taking a seat on the sofa beside Sirius, who took that as an invitation to lean on his shoulder.

“Shh, shut up, it was going so well…”

Remus chuckled gently, but he couldn’t be too angry at Sirius for being so hungover. He’d been through a lot recently and whilst Remus himself didn’t know what it was like to lose a friend to Voldemort, he couldn’t have imagined it was easy.

“I can get you some potions if you need anything?”

Sirius shook his head, reaching for a fork and starting to eat with more determination than Remus had ever seen before. He had finished before Remus himself had even started on his bacon, nibbling the crispy edge of it and feeling rather too full to carry on.

“So…” And he was back again, standing up from the sofa and hurrying to a large stack of parchment on the other side of the room, “we have things to do, people to talk to…”

“I know I need to talk to Pettigrew,” Remus said slowly, “but I can’t help but think we need to come up with a disguise for me first. If he found out and then you were linked to me, you’d be in big trouble.”

Sirius shook his head impatiently, passing a stack of papers to Remus and looking as though he was taking on other tasks to distract himself from that matter.

“We’ll come up with a disguise for you later, if you want to think about it. Right now, I thought we could do that thing we were talking about the other day…”

“Which was what?” Asked Remus, feeling as though Sirius’s brain was now working incredibly fast and he was being left to work out what was going on.

“Your family!”

“Ah…”

Truth be told, he had been happy not to think about it. He’d been thinking he was okay but the matter of his parents seemed to have been raised every day or so at the moment and it was getting rather tiring to think about it. It was weird – it was so long ago, he should be over what had happened to them right now… But Remus also felt very much as though he wasn’t over it at all and never had been. Perhaps he’d not really processed what had happened when he was forced to live with Greyback.

“Not like that,” Sirius saw the look on his face and looked slightly alarmed, “I meant… You know, seeing if there’s anyone still around that you could meet.”

The werewolf perked up slightly at that thought, but he still wasn’t entirely sure how he was going to convince a relative of his that he was a boy who had been believed dead for around ten or eleven years. They would probably think him some kind of imposter out to steal their money…

“How do we even go about that? I have names, I suppose, but some of them aren’t even wizards.”

“It might involve going into the Ministry of Magic…”

Remus’s brown eyes grew wide and fearful. To Sirius, the Ministry might have been a slightly archaic and corrupt institution, but he wasn’t a werewolf. If anyone in there found out the truth about Remus, about what he’d done, then he could very much be in prison by the end of the day…

“Listen,” Sirius said quickly, “you don’t have to go, and it’s legal for you to anyway. We’re not _stealing_ or breaking in – as much as I’d like to do that – we’re going in to request some information which is open to everyone.”

“And it won’t look suspicious if we go in and look for the will and old records of a man who was linked to werewolf attacks?” Remus bit his lip, causing Sirius to stop and think for a minute.

“Where did you used to live with your parents?”

“North Wales…”

“We could pretend we’re doing something about that, then!” He encouraged him, “we could always go in and request a load of information and stuff!”

A little more convinced, Remus nodded slowly, though it was now his turn to lean down and bury his head in his hand, running his fingers through his hair and sighing softly. The more real this became, the more other things stared to worry him, things he hadn’t thought to worry about until now, really.

“I’m not sure I’m even ready,” he said eventually, responding to the look of confusion on Sirius’s tired face, “I’m just about managing to pretend to be normal in front of you, but these people might be Muggles and they’re family and I’m just not sure I’m _ready_ to have a family again.”

“Do you really think that?” Sirius frowned, “do you think you’re not ready? Or do you just don’t think you _deserve_ one?”

His tone was shrewd, but he had hit the nail on the head. Sirius was one thing – Sirius and Dumbledore and Lily and all of them were a part of this _new_ life, but he’d not come across anyone from his past since what happened. They expected him to be a sweet, shy eight year old boy who never spoke out of turn and was always polite.

If they knew the things he had done…

“You don’t understand,” he said quietly.

Sirius looked as though he wanted to fight that claim, but managed to still himself and a moment later, was placing his parchment on the ground.

“Then help me to…”

“With Greyback… He was bad,” Remus swallowed, closing his eyes tightly, “you saw the things he did, he was very bad. But I lived there, too. I did things- Things- You don’t even want to know about. I shouldn’t even be here,” he admitted, “I’m hardly better than him.”

Sirius’s stomach twisted – he didn’t want to think about it either, but it was probably true… Remus couldn’t have lived for years in that camp without doing some questionable things, he was sure, if he really actually thought about it.

“Like what?” He breathed. Surely Remus hadn’t killed people like Greyback had…

The colour drained from the man’s face. He felt small, incredibly small, to be sitting in this man’s house and admitting things which would prove to the world that he would never truly be human, things which would make Sirius see him in a different light from now on.

And it always seemed to be this way, he was getting tired of it. Every conversation they had ended coming back to the camp. He was meant to be _away_ from it, _forgetting_ that part of life and yet it still plagued his dreams, the moments he tried to fall asleep, these conversations with Sirius. Maybe he was away from it, but he would never truly be away from it…

But Sirius was looking at him expectantly now and Remus knew it wasn’t fair for him not to know what he had agreed to live with, that what society said about werewolves was perfectly right and he had every right to turn him out onto the street now.

“I-“ His mouth dry, Remus drew his knees to his chest and hugged them tightly, “I turned people, or helped to, on the full moon… I never exactly _stopped_ Greyback, even when he was doing terrible things,” he mumbled, “I’m not brave or resilient or anything. I sat there whilst he did terrible things and I- I harmed people too, sometimes.”

Sirius stared at him for several long moments, apparently conflicted – Remus was admitting to some things, but skirting around others.

“You’ve never- He _ate_ children, didn’t he?” Sirius bit his lip harshly, “did- You- ?”

Remus stared forcibly at a wall on the other side of the room and slipped off the sofa. He didn’t deserve that. Or this breakfast. Or these clothes. Not when he was a monster people feared – people _rightly_ feared.

“Not intentionally,” he shook slightly, feeling his chest constrict. He’d never told anyone _that_ before. Not even Ezra. He tried not to think about the screams of children who had not deserved to die at night, but…

“Not intentionally?” Sirius said slowly, looking rather alarmed – though not for the reason Remus thought.

He shook his head very slightly, wondering if Sirius would allow him to pack up a few of his possessions before leaving.

“How do you- Accidentally-?” He sounded more _curious_ than horrified, but that would perhaps come later.

“Greyback knew I didn’t want to,” Remus mumbled, trembling slightly, “he- He wouldn’t let me know what I was eating but they would all laugh about it-” He whispered.

“So you didn’t know what you were eating and it was the only thing you had?”

He nodded very slightly.

“That’s- Well, you had to eat to survive, Remus?”

“Why do I get to survive when those people are being _killed_?” He said harshly, “what makes me worth any more than them?!”

Sirius looked as though he didn’t have an answer for that, but reached to rest a hand on Remus’s back, rubbing it gently.

“You’d make it un-happen if you could, couldn’t you? You fought against doing that as much as you possibly could, didn’t you?” He asked softly.

“Of course,” he muttered, “but I didn’t not do it, did I? I’m just as bad.”

Sirius leaned back in the seat and sighed softly.

“Come here...”

Remus blinked, picking himself up from the floor and nervously stumbling towards Sirius, knowing better than to disobey someone when they were telling him what to do.

But next second, he had thrown his arms around Remus in yet _another_ hug, one which seemed to be trying to take the burden off him. The werewolf stood, frozen in shock and fear, but he did not pull away from the man.

“Why are you hugging me?” He whispered, tortured.

“Because your sense of self-esteem is so incredibly fucked up.” He pulled back, looking up at Remus’s tired eyes and heavy expression.

“Did you not hear what I said?” He urged, “I may well have- have-”

“And yet you feel so bad about it that you can’t even say it. You- You would have starved to death, Remus. Those people were already gone. It’s disgusting, I won’t deny it. But I don’t think it’s your fault.” He set his jaw, “Greyback’s at fault. They forced you to do it and then laughed at you-”

He broke off, noticing the way Remus’s eyes seemed red and wet and that he was staring resolutely at nothing, as though blinking would cause the tears to fall.

“I just w-wanted to be human.” He managed, but that was enough to break him – to send the tears rolling down his cheeks, grubby and messy. It was embarrassing Sirius was seeing him like this _again,_ but he wasn’t ever going to stop being this mess, was he?

Sirius seemed a little unsure, but wrapped his arms around Remus again, guiding him back to the sofa.

“One thing doesn’t have to define you, Remus,” he said slowly, “I- I’ve spent my whole life fighting this name. People hear it and think they know exactly who I am, what I’m like. And it’s not true. Why does being bitten have to make you a different person?”

“I lived a-around Greyback for years,” Remus wiped his eyes as Sirius tactfully looked away from him, “I’ve become like him, I k-know I have.”

“I lived around my evil parents for just as long,” Sirius pointed out, “I can’t pretend I’m not like them in _some_ ways,” he pulled a face, “but that doesn’t mean I’m exactly like them. And you’re not even related to him. I’m sure you take after your parents in more ways than you think.”

Remus set his jaw, sure nothing could convince him otherwise – at least not now, when he felt like a monster and Sirius was just _naïve_ to think him anything other.

“I’ve never felt threatened by you because of what you are since you learnt about my true self,” he said gently, “I don’t feel threatened having learnt that about you.”

He managed the weakest of smiles, but the burden of it seemed to be crushing his shoulders until he felt like he would fall down. Sirius pulled his coat off the back of the soft and placed it over Remus like a blanket.

“Maybe-”

“Maybe what?” He whispered.

“Maybe you should get some help, Remus… Just get someone to talk to.”

“About what I did?” He looked horrified – nobody else would be as kind and stupid as Sirius. Any reasonable person would throw him into prison straight away.

Sirius shook his head, though. “Doesn’t have to be the details, Remus. I just mean about your parents, about Ezra. I’m happy to listen, but I can’t say I’m much help, really. I’m a mess myself. _I_ need help.”

Remus raised his eyebrows – _Sirius_ needed help, even when he was put-together and had all this. That didn’t really make sense…

“I lost my parents years ago, it’s not- I should be over it by now.”

“Mm, I’m sure you really got to grieve when you had been moved into a werewolf camp with Greyback, right?” Sirius rested a hand on Remus’s knee, sending a shiver down his spine he didn’t want to think about. “I’m sure you got a good chance to say goodbye to Ezra before Greyback forced you into your inner circle.”

Though his fists were clenching in his lap, Remus managed a wry smile.

“I’m a mess, Sirius… I’m just a mess. You don’t have to do this. You didn’t ask to have your life become so complicated.”

“Oh, if you think I’m not a mess myself, then you’re sorely mistaken,” Sirius said softly, “it’s different from you, but you don’t grow up in a Death Eater family as a gay, Gryffindor kid who loved Muggleborns without getting some scars yourselves.”

“Then you don’t need even more of a mess in your life,” he mumbled, looking down at his hands. They were trembling slightly – scarred, worn hands which had looked that way for as long as he could remember by this point. “Maybe I should live somewhere else.”

Sirius shook his head slowly. “Do you genuinely think I don’t like having you around, Remus?”

“There are some things you don’t know…”

“You’ve shared something pretty big with me today and I still want you around. You’d have to do something pretty shockingly bad for me not to want to live with you. Come on, we should work on your disguise for seeing Peter, if nothing else,” he said, passing Remus a box of tissues and wrapping an arm around his shoulder – which was weird, but not horrible, “we could see how you would look blond?”

“Just as much of a mess,” Remus muttered, but he seemed, as usual, to perk up a little at the offer of a distraction. Whatever they did, at least it was a distraction from the things he had done.

* * *

 

As it happened, blond hair made Remus look a good deal paler. After having the opportunity to sort himself out, the pair of men had experimented with Death Eater looks for when he visited Peter. In honesty, he didn’t need _that_ good a disguise, but it was fun to see how he looked ginger, or blond.

They’d settled on a look where Remus had thick, blond hair – which made him look like one of the pureblood families, Sirius had told him, slightly paler skin than it already seemed to give him, and cold blue-grey eyes. Sirius had seemed slightly alarmed to see him like that, especially when Remus did a fairly good impression of some of the crueller werewolves on the camp, but that just meant it was working, really.

And whilst he wasn’t exactly a huge fan of the way it made him look, Remus almost enjoyed being able to pretend he was someone else, coming up with a backstory for them and getting to escape being Remus Lupin the werewolf rescued from a near-death experience whose dead parents came up at any given opportunity and didn’t really fit into either word. Not that pretending to be an evil, murderous person was _fun,_ but it was at least a breath of fresh air from feeling useless.

It had got even better, too, when Sirius had lent him his black cloak to try on and declared that something was missing – something, it turned out, very important to the role.

And that was why Remus stood in Diagon Alley now, staring down the street with a mixture of nerves and excitement. He’d not been here since he was _very_ small and whilst feeling as though he might be recognised, it felt _right._

“Alright,” Sirius grinned from his side, turning to look at Remus and actually having to tilt his head _upwards_ due to his height, “I’ve checked and I have enough cash for this. We’ve got to get your wand, but I’m guessing you want to look in a couple of places whilst we’re here, right?”

Remus assumed he could work that out from the way he looked wistfully into the window of a pet shop, watching as a great barn owl hooted peacefully. Isolating it from the bustle of the street, he focused on the great bird and smiled slightly – he’d heard them every night for years, it was strange how comforting the sound was.

“Yeah… I’m just gonna have a look at that owl, if it’s okay with you,” he smiled vaguely, trailing away from Sirius’s side to allow the bird to nip gently at his fingers, laughing softly as he brushed his fingers through her soft feathers. The creature was probably quite unlike the ones he had heard at night, domesticated and trained to fit into the wizarding world. Was that what he was becoming? Reaching for one of the owl pellets in her bowl to feed to her, Remus smiled at the bird, pulling himself away only when he heard Sirius knock over something across the shop and hurry away before anyone realised it was him.

“Did you ever have an owl?” He rolled down his sleeves, eagerly looking around the street – every shop looked exciting and inviting, but they didn’t have quite that much time.

“My parents did,” Sirius said easily, walking slowly enough to allow Remus to peer into the window of each shop, looking almost longingly at the things inside, if only as signs of the wizard he hoped he could one day be. “But she wasn’t as nice as that owl, I think they trained her to bite me,” he chuckled, “James had one at school, though. We tried to get him to fly alongside us when we went out and flew our brooms, which was a disaster…”

“Yeah?” Remus grinned a bit, trying to imagine what it was even like to ride a broom.

“Well, we quickly realised that he wouldn’t follow us, so we tried following him on our brooms, seeing who could keep up with him for the longest, but… Owls dive whenever they see a mouse or a shrew.”

“So?”

“So,” Sirius leaned closer, pushing the hair off his face, “see this scar on my forehead?”

Remus, whose own scars were big and red and ugly, had to squint a little to see the faint mark, but it was definitely there. “Yeah…”

“From falling into a tree when the bloody owl went in for a mouse,” he grinned, allowing his hair to flop back over his face in an infuriatingly attractive manner.

Remus laughed, forgetting about the rest of the street as they fell into a conversation about owls and broomsticks and all the things Sirius had fallen off until they reached a funny, narrow little shop at the very end of the street, so unnoticeable he would have missed it if Sirius hadn’t stopped.

“This is it? The wand place?” He glanced up at it – the writing on the shop’s logo answered that question. He felt slightly daft going in, though – weren’t people meant to do this when they were eleven?

“Yeah, let’s go,” he nudged him gently, “I want to show off the fact I’ve not manage to break my wand in all the years I’ve had it. It happened to Peter once…”

His face fell as Peter was raised again, even if he had done so himself. Taking that as a cue, Remus headed towards the shop, opening the door and hearing a little bell jingle ring above his head and a pair of feet shuffle towards the counter.

“Hello? Can I help you?”

A rather old woman with a quavery voice and a pair of glasses on her nose looked up at Remus.

Remus, who had been expecting someone more intimidating, practically stooped to smile at the elderly woman.

“Hi, I was- Could I please buy a wand?”

She broke into a toothy smile and nodded. “Certainly, you’re in the right place, my boy. Where’s your current one?”

Feeling rather awkward once again, Remus shook his head. “I don’t have one…”

To his surprise, the old woman laughed and disappeared off behind the counter, leaving Remus to turn around and stare at Sirius, bemused.

“She probably thinks you got drunk and lost it somewhere,” he smiled easily, “they’re not going to get you to do actual magic with it, it’s honestly okay.”

Remus, who felt slightly uneasy every time he even spoke to a person, managed a slightly strained smile as the woman came shuffling back with a tape measure, coming out in front of the counter to measure what she called his ‘wand arm’ (which was what he called his right arm), muttering away to herself as she did so.

“Do you have anything in mind?” She asked him, eyes twinkling a little, “not that you’ll get any real choice. The wand chooses you…”

“No, I’m just going to go with whichever… Chooses me,” he told her, trying not to consider what happened to wizards whom no wands picked and whether they were even allowed to buy one at all. Beside him, the woman waved her own spindly wand to send several boxes flying down towards them both, most of them rather long.

“Let’s try you with this,” she smiled, holding out the first wand, which Remus took _very_ tentatively, remembering the last time he tried a spell. “Wave it.”

He waved it, but it would have been no different if it was a twig – nothing happened.

The woman seemed unconcerned, though, passing Remus another wand as though this happened to all her customers, one which felt distinctly _wrong_ in his hand before he even waved it. But that wasn’t a bad thing at all, because it meant he _was_ feeling them. Not even daring to try it, he smiled and put the wand back in the box.

“Not that one, that one felt _wrong_.”

“Did you try it?”

“No. But I feel like if I did, there would have been a lot of rubble,” he apologised, “it made my magic feel… Bad. Like it wanted to channel it the wrong way.”

Remus was unsure whether normal wizards talked about their magic in this way. Given most of them got a wand and learnt at least some control from the age of eleven, they probably didn’t feel their magic in the strange bursts that people in the camp did. They did not have to repress it, but without any way to channel it, there was little control – sometimes things would turn blue, or set on fire and there was very little he could do about it. Now he felt as though he was trying to squish all of that magic to channel it through a wand, which seemed like a very precise art to muster and not one he could have done with _that_ wand.

“Intuitive, eh?” She said slowly, sifting through the boxes and locating another, “the wand _will_ choose you, but sometimes wizards of great power will be able to tell when it is not right for them without using it.”

He highly doubted he had great power, rather than an inability to control the power he did have than most customers his age probably did. Maybe it would have been helpful to mention it to the woman, but it would have led to a lot of questions.

“How many did it take you, Sirius?” He turned, willing for a little comfort about the fact none of these wands felt right for him as the woman passed him a third. But Sirius had disappeared, vanished entirely without a trace, which made his chest constrict suddenly. He didn’t need him there all the time, but had he just _left?_

The woman coughed, sending Remus back to earth to try a fourth and fifth wand, which she mysteriously shook her head at each time he tried waving them. As a sixth was set down on the counter, he was far too distracted about Sirius’s absence to be focusing on how the wands felt.

“Concentrate. You can’t buy a wand if your mind isn’t put to it,” she raised her voice, sending him back to earth as he picked up the next, balancing its handle gentle in his palm and feeling a shiver run down his spine, one _he_ attributed to fear, but something which caused her to smile.

“Wave it. No, not at the other wands! At the bell.”

Feeling quite daft, Remus flicked his wand in the direction of the bell on the shop’s door and heard it ring gently, the sound filling the quiet, dusty shop.

“How does it feel?”

He smiled, glancing down at the wand and understanding what it meant all of a sudden. This felt like it belonged in his hand, far more than it did in the shop. He’d made the bell ring without doing a spell and without anything exploding or burning, which was more than good enough for him.

“May I have it?”

The old woman smiled, but there was something unnerving about it. Her teeth were changing shape, growing longer and longer as the hair on her head became thicker, darker and a hand reached out to grab Remus by the collar.

The air in his lungs seemed to flood out in a single breath as he heard a cold laugh. He would have turned to Sirius for support, but Sirius _wasn’t there._

Instead, it was just Remus. Remus and a woman who was becoming younger and younger by the second, her darkening her forming curls around her pale face with its high cheekbones which reminded Remus of someone.

And then she was raising her wand-

And then-

Remus didn’t have the magic to fight this woman, but he did have a pair of legs which could get him out of the shop much faster than her, speeding through the narrowed cobbled streets with nowhere really to go. Sirius had gone and this woman seemed intent on following him – though he didn’t know _why –_

But with magic, it was only so long before she caught him up.

* * *

 

“Remus? _Remus?!_ ”

The urgency in Sirius’s voice was unmistakable as he passed in and out of busy shops, desperately searching for the man. He had left Ollivander’s when he shouldn’t have, he knew, but for a second… Well, it didn’t matter now. When he came back, both Remus and the assistant had disappeared. It was more than that, though – there was an air of something _wrong_ in the place, coupled with the man’s knowledge that he had just _left_ Remus in the middle of nowhere.

And it had been half an hour since he’d been back there now, looking in every shop in the hope he hadn’t gone far. But he wasn’t in the shop with the owl, or the one which sold chocolate, or even the bookshop, and it was all starting to feel rather hopeless.

But he didn’t really have a choice, if he wanted to find the man, stumbling through the streets and trying to keep the guilt at bay – but he had abandoned Remus without giving him any way of getting home, which made it rather difficult.

Come to think of it, he’d left without even leaving him enough money to get the wand-

“ _Sirius?!”_

The pureblood found himself face-to-face with Remus Lupin, who looked far paler than usual and slightly angry (he didn’t blame him). It seemed he had been huddled in a corner of a side street in Diagon Alley, apparently sinking into the shadows until he’d seen Sirius.

“Shit- Merlin, sorry,” he whispered, looking the man over once, “I’m so sorry, I thought-“

He couldn’t finish it, it seemed so stupid now.

“We have to leave,” Remus muttered, turning to walk back towards the Leaky Cauldron at such a speed that Sirius practically had to jog to keep up.

“Are you- What happened?” Sirius blinked – he’d been expecting him to be angry, but there was something else entirely wrong with Remus now – _and_ he was gripping a real wand in his hand. “You got your wand- How?”

He stopped in the street for half a second, looking down at the wand as though he had forgotten entirely that it was there.

“I- I stole it, I guess,” he said in a quiet voice, holding the thing at arm’s length, “but-“

“What?!”

“The old woman in the shop,” he muttered, “she wasn’t- She- _Fuck,_ Sirius, it was a disguise.”

Sirius blanched, eyes widening in fear that it had been _Greyback,_ that the man somehow knew Remus was alive and was trying to snatch him back… To think he’d left him there, defenceless…

“Who was it? What did they look like?”

Remus looked as though he was struggling to remember, straining as they hurried through the streets to get back to the pub, Sirius moving just as fast as Remus was now it was about more than him leaving the man behind in a shop with no means of paying the assistant.

“I don’t know. She must have been after you, I don’t know her. Black hair, curly, a little bit older than us… Sharp cheekbones…”

Sirius’s heart dropped several feet through his body, feeling as though he’d been winded as he hurried Remus into the little pub and pulled him into a corner. Perhaps it was another person, but what were the chances?

“Did she look like me?” He asked heavily, earning a look of horrified surprise from Remus.

Rather reluctantly, he nodded. “I suppose she did, a bit.”

His blood ran cold in his veins. He’d been in that shop and _Bellatrix_ had been there, disguised and poised and ready to hurt him. Which meant she knew he would be visiting, which meant she knew about Remus, which meant Greyback did…

From the look of Remus’s paling face, he was having the same realisation in the moment, gripping his wand tighter and tighter even though he did not have the powers to use it.

“ _Bellatrix,”_ he spat, glancing around the darkened pub in horror – she wouldn’t come here anyway, though. “Which means- She wasn’t after me, Remus. Not today. Perhaps you’d better keep that wand…”

“What do you mean?” The taller man slumped in his chair, looking several years older in a single moment.

“The reason I left the shop- I’m so sorry- I thought I saw my brother running away from something,” he mumbled, “I thought he was in danger. I know he’s- Well, he’s not really family any more, but I thought I could save him. But,” his expression became harsher, more bitter all of a sudden, “It must have been a ruse to get you alone with Bellatrix, alone and with much less power.”

“Why? She didn’t even try that hard.”

Sirius shook his head – he couldn’t work that one out. Maybe they thought taking Remus would cause him to switch over to the dark side, return to Greyback. But Bellatrix Lestrange wouldn’t waste her time doing things for Greyback without getting something significantly better in return.

“Maybe she wanted to warn us?” He said slowly, feeling utterly hopeless. If she’d wanted to unnerve and confuse them, then it had definitely worked, “if she had a wand, she could have got you quite easily.”

Remus nodded, scratching the wood on the table with his fingernail and shuddering.

“Perhaps she wanted to let us know Greyback knows I’m alive and that they know I’m with you,” he said in a low voice, “so we’ll never quite feel safe again.”

If that was the case, then Sirius was fairly convinced she had won by now – he didn’t feel as though he would ever be safe again. And if Greyback knew Remus was alive and with him, there wasn’t much hope for him either.

“I just don’t know where we go from here,” he ran a hand through his hair, messing it up as much as he was ever prepared to. Every step of the way, he had known what to do with Remus, but now he felt just as out-of-depth as the man himself, not able to make him safe. His new housemate already seemed to feel unsafe just at being _in_ this world. Now they had real _proof_ people knew of their existence, it all felt quite hopeless. “I mean, we’ve still got duties for the Order, but…”

“We fight, right?” Remus said softly – but there was a rousing quality to it. Not exactly the kind of fighting pep-talk Moody made, neither the charismatic speeches Dumbledore gave, but something which offered _hope._ And if Remus could have hope, then he certainly could. “You’re clever, we’re clever. We can outsmart them and even if that doesn’t work, we can try to fight them. We’ve got things worth fighting for, haven’t we?”

Sirius thought first of James, then Lily, then their other friends. Then just those who had been subjected to people like his parents their whole life – he certainly wasn’t short of people to fight for. The momentary doubt faded away as he founded himself staring into Lupin’s scarred face with a smile.

“How do you remain so optimistic after all you’ve been through?”

It was a genuine question. Sirius seemed happy enough a lot of the time, but he had his dark moments too often – and they were far too dark, too.

“Survival technique,” Remus shrugged, his brown eyes meeting Sirius’s. They were a little bigger than he always expected them to be and a little warmer than he prepared for, but he _loved_ them. “I wouldn’t have lasted very long if I gave up. I know that sounds _really_ morbid, but sometimes it was just a case of hoping for the best and carrying on.”

He broke into a smile, glancing at the man’s long eyelashes as he blinked. Pretty. There was something almost pretty about Remus; now he was wearing these things, he looked far too delicate to have lived the life he once had. He didn’t want to underestimate the man or reduce him to such things, but he was more graceful than he took credit for and far more wonderful than he saw.

“What? I’m genuinely not being morbid!”

Sirius snapped out of it rather reluctantly.

“I know, of course not! I was just thinking how good it is, that attitude.”

“Believe me,” Remus placed his wand on the table, “it doesn’t come every day.”

Reassured to hear that it wasn’t just him who had ups and downs like that, Sirius leaned forward to inspect the new wand – it was handsome and long, in a fairly pale colour of wood with a handle which said both delicate and strong, like a willow tree.

“What is it? Which wood?”

“I’m not sure,” Remus admitted, looking slightly sheepish, “I didn’t ask that woman as she chased me out of the shop and I stole it. I think the core is unicorn hair, though. Which is nice, because unicorns don’t have to be killed to give their hair…”

Sirius knew he was thinking about the use of dragon heartstring and it was fair enough, really. Remus had probably heard enough about magical creatures being killed by wizards to feel as though he couldn’t ignore it. It was a reality he faced – whereas Sirius had never stopped to consider how something had died for the core of his wand, potentially. Putting the thought aside, he gave it a nod and leaned back.

“Do you fancy heading home? This had been quite a lot…”

Remus was beginning to look tired – not physically, for he seemed to have the stamina of an ox – but every time a person came too close to him, he looked weary and in great need of some time alone.

“Mm, yeah. I guess I could start trying some spells, if you’re not too worried about me breaking the house,” he laughed, though looked a little nervous.

“It’s fine. You can borrow one of my spellbooks from first year, now you’ve got the right wand you should probably be okay in terms of blowing stuff up,” he grinned, “not that it stopped us at Hogwarts. We quite enjoyed doing that from time to time.”

“Yeah, this is the first roof I’ve had over my head for a while now,” Remus carefully stowed his wand away, “I’m not planning on blowing it up.”

“Good. If you’re okay with it, I might go out. James needs a hand because he told Lily he would learn to bake cakes.”

“And you’re going to be _helpful_ there?”

Remus raised an eyebrow as he stood, but there was no harsh intention there, just the smile of a man who was delighted to have someone to joke around with like this.

Sirius laughed and picked himself up from the chair too, heading back towards the door which led to the Muggle world with Remus by his side, fighting the mad desire to seize the man’s scarred hand right now and hold it in his own for all it was worth.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise!! here's some more because I have a bit more time and about 10 more chapters which just need editing

_The sun had set but it was still warm. The perfect kind of summer evening when the heat of the day lingered as fireflies and crickets emerged in their masses, basking in the traces of the sunset as the world closed into a sleepy state._  
  
Remus was warm, too, and comfortable, as he lay in the long grass. The heat had caused sweat to trickle down his neck and beads of it to form over his forehead, but now he was comfortable again, comfortable and full from a meal cooked on a fire until it was slightly crispy, followed by a handful of the first few blackberries of the year. The juice had made his lips a little pinker, too.  
  
The sky seemed to be somewhere between sunset and darkness, a blue which looked like watered-down ink, too lazy to turn as dark as it did in winter. It was close to the solstice; it probably wouldn’t truly be dark all night.

_In the distance, a stream bubbled merrily. It had been welcomed earlier in the day – to drink and cool down in the shade, toes in the clear water as it washed over Remus’s feet. Even now, he liked the sound – unlike winter, the world seemed to be teeming with life, buzzing and humming even as the day slipped away._

_It was as close as it came to bliss, really, lying beside him as they listened to time itself change. Once it was finally dark, he would surely climb onto his back and they would tread carefully back into the camp. But that mattered less on these long summer days – they would watch the stars together as they fell asleep outside, requiring only each other for warmth, and wake to yellow sunlight through the trees._

_He reached for the hand next to him, taking it to hold in his. There was no need for talking, the silence warm and comfortable as the field around them. He could see his chest, though, rising and falling as steadily as his own. Their heads were so close their hair mixed together on the grass, too, his own a little lighter brown than usual, thanks to the sun – the other’s much darker, but soft, so soft._

_“Mmm…”_

_He sighed, wanting never to move from this place, except perhaps to cup the water from the stream in his hands and sip it gently. A soft rumble of a laugh by his side confirmed the feeling, making him feel as though he was soaring in the sky above them._

_“I like this. I really like this.”_

_Remus entwined their fingers this time, holding the hand in his and looking at the smooth skin as he squeezed, palms no longer too sweaty to do so comfortably._

_“I don’t know this. I like this…”_

_The voice sounded different than usual – a little deeper, yet clearer, less gruff and a lot less northern. He turned his head an inch to face the man and met grey eyes, rather than hazel. But the surge of bliss didn’t subside… He still reached forward to kiss the lips he faced, but they were pinker now, the hair longer…_

_“Do you always do this? Every summer?”_

_Remus huffed out a laugh now, so close to the other man he leaned into the warmth of his breath slightly._

_“Only when it’s warm enough…”_

_“Are you warm enough?”_

_Seeking it as an invitation, Remus moved inwards as some sort of jacket was wrapped around his shoulders, sighing lazily._

_“I don’t mind moving a little closer…”_

_“Okay, but we should go to bed soon. The room will be very hot.”_

_His head was on the man’s chest now, but he was certain he had heard the word_ room, _which was odd, because there were no rooms here. And yet it still felt right, as though they would somehow reach this room and always had done._

_“Alright,” he whispered, feeling the lips on his neck as they rearranged themselves and he found his skin being soothed with cool, soft kisses. “Sirius… Oh- Sirius…”_

_Unable to help himself, he let out a soft moan in the night air, though surely nobody heard it. Breath caught in his chest, he melted into the man, back arching as he introduced his teeth, little by little digging them into his neck until Remus was squirming, delighted and red in the face._

_“Sirius!_ Fuck…”

_He was better even than Ezra, now that he came to think of it – sweeter, but somehow fiercer, wilder, as though he had no other outlet for it._

_The soft, clean hands which showed no sign of wear just yet moved further down his cooling body, sliding under cotton clothes Remus didn’t even think he owned, fingertips running over soft skin, stroking and feeling as they ventured lower and lower… He moaned – a sound which filled the field and seemed to echo out to them as he whispered his name, desperate and willing this time-_

“Remus?”

_Desperate not to have to leave this place, he rolled himself further into the warmth, sighing shakily as teeth grazed across his neck, digging in just enough to leave traces of their work when morning came. He didn’t want to leave- He didn’t want to_ move, _other than to reciprocate, to thank this man for making him feel as though every inch of himself was bursting into wonderful, golden flames…_

“Oi! Remus!”

_Whatever that was, he wasn’t sure, but it was disturbing his warm sleep._

_He groaned, burrowing into the man – only to find the world getting lighter and lighter, red light seeping in through the curtains as someone gently shook his shoulder. But it wasn’t him._

A room materialised, slowly but surely, as the field faded and disintegrated before his eyes. Gone were the seemingly endless skies, replaced with white walls and only a square of light. The warm, heavy weight against him seemed to be coming from a pile of blankets on top of him, his toes poking out the end just enough to be seen.

But the man standing before him was the same…

Whatever that meant, it made his cheeks turn red – deep, deep red until it ran through him like a fire of shame and embarrassment.

He was almost the same, but the look in his grey eyes was less hungry – more confused, concerned, something he couldn’t quite place…

“Sorry…”

He had mumbled sleepily before even knowing what he was saying, but felt a sudden urge to cover himself with the blankets, ensuring no inch of his body was visible. There were things he wanted to hide from him, even if he could not hide from this entirely.

The warm laugh was similar enough, though – a plate and a pile of papers was placed beside his bed and it sank down a few inches at the end.

“Good dream?”

Sirius had both his eyebrows raised and was staring Remus directly in the eye. For the first time in a while, he wished the floor would swallow him up whole.

* * *

 

Sirius wasn’t sure _what_ had happened that morning, but there were parts of that memory which would stay in his mind forever. Waking up and finding Remus had slept in late, cooking up some breakfast and bringing some of his findings of the previous night and going into the room to _that._

A very small part of him had been _delighted_ to hear Remus saying his name that way – it wasn’t just in his imagination now. But the elephant in the room had tripled in size and was probably _never_ going to be addressed.

He’d laughed it off, though, sitting on the end of the bed and only teasing lightly.

“You need to meet some new guys, Remus, put yourself out there.”

He couldn’t work out why he was advocating Remus getting with someone _else,_ but it was probably unfair to restrict him from it, right?

Remus pulled the blankets up as far as his nose, his bright red cheeks peppered with the freckles on his skin. He looked incredibly adorable, but Sirius pushed that thought away.

“Sorry…”

“Honestly, it’s fine.” Sirius shrugged it off, smiling much more calmly than he felt inside, “do you want to go to a bar or something tonight?”

Remus lowered the blankets a couple of inches and pulled his knees up to ensure he was hiding everything.

“To… Meet guys?”

“Well, if you want to… It is how I meet them, but maybe you’d prefer a bookshop for that or a cute coffee shop.”

Remus smiled, but there was a sadness to his expression that Sirius didn’t really understand.

“Thanks, but… Not yet. I’m not sure I want that.”

Sirius nodded and the conversation lulled for a minute, more awkward than it ever was when they both fell silent. Both men seemed to have things to hide and nothing to hide behind.

“You might want to see the papers I’ve got,” he said eventually, glad of an excuse to break the silence, “I mentioned the thing about relatives to Lily, just told her we were looking, and she gave me some stuff to help on the Muggle said,” Sirius smiled softly, passing him the paper. “I think you have to fill in all the members you know and you can take it somewhere and they’ll help you find these people.”

It cost quite a lot of money to do it that way, but Sirius had more knowledge of Muggle money than he did of tracking down family members – and it was nice if at least one person in the house did not totally despise their entire family.

“I can do that,” he sat up straighter, looking distinctly less flustered now the conversation was not centred around the fact Sirius had walked in on him moaning in bed. “If you have a pen,        I can do it now.”

Sirius passed Remus a pen – which Lily had given him _with_ the sheet of parchment, because he seemed only to have broken quills – and watched as the man rested the paper on his knees, carefully writing in names and places, what he could remember.

“What does it ask?” He crawled across the bed, moving closer to Remus and finding his cheeks turn faintly pink again, “I don’t know how Muggles _do_ this.”

“Names, birth dates and places,” he smiled, writing with deliberate care – it was now easier to see he had stopped doing it properly since he was eight, but his writing was definitely legible, if a little childish. “I know my grandparents and my mum had a brother, so there’s something there. Is Lily really happy to take it to this place for me?”

“Actually,” Sirius smiled, “she said she’d like you to go with her, you could go out for the day and- I’m not sure- Do _Muggle_ things.”

Remus blinked, apparently confused that someone other than Sirius actively wanted to spend time with him.

“Sure- When? Do we still have to do this Death Eater thing?”

“I think we might,” Sirius said grimly, “but I think we might have to go with slightly more reinforcement than we were planning. “Maybe you can learn some defensive spells and I can be nearby with James’s cloak- He has an invisibility cloak.”

The other man, who was probably wishing he had an invisibility _duvet,_ stuck his tongue out of his mouth slightly as he wrote his own name at the bottom of the diagram and placed it neatly beside the bed.

“I could do with one of those,” he smiled, looking down at the paper again, running his fingers over the blank spaces as though hoping they might one day be filled in. Sirius hoped so, too. He’d lost a family, more or less, but he dreamed of finding family members who were like him and he clung to the few he still had, which meant it was easy to want Remus to find a whole other family.

Though if that meant he left the house to live with him…

He wasn’t so sure about that. It was a thought he pushed away a little too forcefully. Remus wasn’t just going to _move out_ if he found somewhere else, right?

But maybe he would. Maybe if he one day decided he wanted to meet another guy at a bar, he would want to move in with him and Sirius would be… Just a friend.

Though wasn’t that what he was right now?

Or was there more?

* * *

 

Remus spent a rather long time in the shower that morning once Sirius had excused himself and left the room. The pureblood both did and did not want to think about how cold it needed to be… When he’d healed Remus, he had seen _quite_ a lot of the man, but it was in a very different context. He hadn’t been able to think about him like that _then,_ but it was another story when he knew Remus was drifting out of the bathroom with just a towel around his waist as Sirius practised banging around in the kitchen and sang badly to himself.

He emerged a short while later, now fully dressed in jeans which were slightly tighter than the rest, as though he _knew_ what Sirius was feeling about him – or _repressing_ , more aptly.

“Good shower?”

He nodded, settling down on the sofa and curling up as usual, though he looked a little lost without a book.

“Everything okay?”

Sirius sat himself on the arm of the sofa and rested his elbows on his knees, grinning a lopsided smile into Remus’s brown eyes.

“Yeah, can I ask you something?”

“Mhm.” Sirius’s chest felt constricted for a moment, but a second later it was clear he needn’t have worried.

“What was Hogwarts like? My dad told me some stuff and I always imagined it, but I’ve never _been.”_

Sirius slipped off the arm of the chair and leaned against it instead, resting his feet inches from Remus’s lap. He didn’t want to embellish it and make Remus jealous, but it had been pretty wonderful to him, there was no hiding the way his eyes lit up…

“Amazing,” he started, slightly breathless. “I- My childhood was pretty shitty, if I’m honest. I had food to eat and stuff, but my parents were horrible and by age eleven, I wasn’t exactly against them in the way I am now, but I was badly-behaved, and they disliked me for it. What eleven-year-old wants to learn Latin?” He sighed, leaning back and running a hand through his hair. “And the houses – all the houses have different traits attributed to them – and my entire family were in Slytherin and then I got into _Gryffindor,”_ his eyes lit up.

“What are Gryffindors like?”

“It’s the house of bravery and it’s the enemy of Slytherin so they were _very_ pleased about that, but I was delighted because it was kind of proof that I didn’t have to be like them… I always thought I was a bit different from them and I always wanted to fit in, but this taught me that I actually _was_ different and it was okay.”

At first, he had been very scared. Nobody in the entirely family had _not_ been in Slytherin, as far as he knew. Had he been put in Ravenclaw, he might have been in less trouble – though it wasn’t perfect, he could have claimed he wanted to be a scholar in the future. Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, on the other hand, were less acceptable to his parents.

But when the hat was placed on his head, it had said that Slytherin wasn’t right… It had told him that he didn’t have to be that, that Gryffindor could do him well. Unable to believe what he was hearing, Sirius had listened to the hat telling him that he would do well in Gryffindor. And James Potter had told him that he was hoping on being in Gryffindor too…

Sitting down at that table, Sirius had never felt better in his life than at that moment. He belonged somewhere, somewhere which felt _right._

Remus was smiling, too, though Sirius was wondering what his life would be like if he hadn’t gone to Hogwarts either – pretty rubbish, really.

“Anyway, I was put in a dorm with James and Peter and some other guys and the three of us hit it off. James was- He had a similar background as me in some ways, but his parents had somehow found a way to make Latin _fun_ and they didn’t like to talk about killing people for sheer pleasure. I think with him there, I started learning what life was like – or what it could be like.

“And we had fun, too. There were lessons and stuff, which were cool because we got to use magic unlike the stuff I’d done at home before Hogwarts, but James and I started _pranking_ people and it was amazing,” his face lit up again, and even Remus was looking similar now.

“And the _castle,_ Remus. It’s gorgeous… It’s huge and it took ages to get to lessons, but in winter it was full of roaring fires and in the summer it was light and airy, not gloomy like the house had been back home. It just felt so alive, too, full of people my own age who were having fun, who liked me, who wanted to be my friends.”

“I’ve not been to a castle for _years,”_ Remus smiled wistfully.

“But you’ve been?” Sirius hadn’t ever been to a castle before Hogwarts – he’d only seen pictures of them in books, but Hogwarts surpassed all of those easily.

“I grew up in Wales,” he chuckled softly, “of course I’ve been to castles. My parents would take me to them and I would- Well, I would sometimes pretend it was Hogwarts. Which resulted in them having to shut me up pretty quickly once or twice.”

Sirius shifted closer, delighted with the image of a young Remus tearing around a castle, shouting about real magic and unnerving his parents – he had still been a very normal _child,_ after all, even if his childhood hadn’t been particularly typical.

“And I think I started showing magic at a castle once and they had to whisk me home, though they were delighted…”

Sirius grinned – he had plenty of his own stories about that.

“I made it rain slugs on my mother’s head when she shouted at me. I was about three,” he laughed. It was still one of his proudest achievements, even if he’d not even had much of a hand in it deliberately. “She was so angry, but it was probably a relief, purebloods get very worried that their children don’t have any magic. The entire family was torn between anger and pride, I think.”

“I turned my mum’s hair blue, apparently,” Remus laughed, wishing he could actually remember it happening, rather than just the stories, “we were just at home, but she was a Muggle and couldn’t fix it, so she had to floo my dad at work so he could come home and change her hair back so we could actually go out to the shops to buy food.” The man chuckled, speaking more rapidly with every second. “I don’t think he managed to be annoyed, though. They just wanted to tell my grandparents I was definitely a wizard.”

Sirius nodded eagerly – his grandparents had probably been _very_ different from the ones Remus had, but both seemed to have been eager to learn about the powers of the grandsons, as wizards usually were.

“I think I got even worse as I got older. More… Directional, sort of. Not that I could choose when things happened, but when I was angry, the magic would work in my favour, like it knew my emotions even if I couldn’t control it. My mother had a fight with my younger brother once,” he paused, frowning slightly. He had fought with her a lot already by this point, but it was _wrong_ to see her shouting at Regulus – especially when Sirius knew he was responsible for what had happened anyway. “I managed to burn down a tapestry as a distraction and he wriggled away until she could take it out on one of the house elves and calm down a bit.”

Remus nodded, though it was slower and more careful this time.

“I always wondered about that,” he said softly, “after Greyback- Well, after I started living at the camp, Greyback tried to get close to me. I don’t know what he wanted and I don’t really like to think about it, but whenever he tried to come near me, there was always a very local, torrential hailstorm when I was scared. I think he actually gave up trying-”

He broke off, blinking; Sirius had wrapped an arm around his shoulders.

“You know how- You know how people always said adults were wonderful and protected you and knew everything?” He asked softly. His mother had tried to pump that view into him, but he had learnt the truth eventually. “And then suddenly one day you realised that adults weren’t all like that, and they fucked up just as much as kids did, except it was much more dangerous and painful and it kind of turned your world around? Because it was like there was nobody you could go to?”

For him, it had been seeing the true colours of his mother. Learning, slowly and surely, that what she did was not exactly normal and – after some long conversations with James Potter – that it was definitely not good for him. It was as though a blindfold had been lifted from his eyes and he had suddenly learnt what he actually deserved from life. The authority of Walburga Black had crumbled into dust that day…

“Yeah.”

Beside him, Remus looked as though he knew that feeling all too well…

“My parents weren’t like that,” he said quickly, “I was lucky, they stuck by me in thick and thin. But when I lost them and ended up with Greyback, I learnt that people didn’t always want to protect me. Sometimes I was just a small person who could sneak through the trees to shoot a rabbit for dinner and be ignored for the rest of the night.”

Sirius squeezed him gently.

“I just want to be better than them,” the pureblood sighed. “I’m far from perfect, I _know_ I’m a mess. But I don’t ever want to make someone feel like that, I don’t want people to _dread_ me walking into a room or opening post from me. I don’t want to _become_ them.”

Remus swallowed so hard it was impossible not to focus on his Adam’s apple moving in his throat, and there was a tightness to his voice when he spoke.

“Me neither,” he whispered, “sometimes I feel like I have to fight it.”

“You’re not like him,” Sirius said slowly, “I could see that from the start, before I even knew your true colours and you mine. I can’t say I liked you straight away, but you weren’t like him. You might have acted as you would towards someone who invaded your life, but you tried to warn me about things, Remus. You’re a _lot_ more than him, that’s for sure.”

Remus fidgeted for a moment but turned to face Sirius soon after.

“You’re not like them, you know? I don’t need to have met them to know that.”

“I’m worried I will be,” Sirius said, “I- You’ve not seen me angry, I don’t want to lose control-”

“Hey, I’m not saying you won’t have some traits from them, sadly, that’s how it works. I just mean a shorter temper,” he added hurriedly, “but it’s about how you react to it. Besides, your parents wouldn’t let a werewolf live in the house, would they? They’d kill me.”

“And make you into a rug, probably,” Sirius said darkly, shuddering in with Remus. “Definitely not. I take pride in not being sick like that.”

“Ever think…” Remus said in a soft voice, wrapping an arm around Sirius’s shoulder this time and allowing him to lean into his taller torso, leaning on his chest with a sigh, “that you worry about things far too much?”

Sirius laughed. But then, it was hard to worry about anything with his head on Remus Lupin’s chest.

* * *

Lily had offered to take Remus to find out about his family history on the Muggle side for several reasons. For starters, she didn’t trust Sirius to walk into a Muggle building without somehow doing something extremely odd – which wouldn’t be a problem, but this was the kind of thing which needed doing properly. Secondly, Remus had spent essentially _all_ his time since escaping the werewolf camp with Sirius, who was great to have around, but wasn’t necessarily the most relaxing presence. Once able to convince Sirius that it would be a chance for him to spend some time messing around with James (didn’t really take much convincing), Remus had filled out his own details, Sirius had given him the money and she had arrived at the flat to meet him.

It was weird to think that so many people would want to protect her if they knew she was spending a day with a _werewolf._ But Remus seemed so sweet and gentle both times she’d met him, so it wasn’t a problem for her at all. She wasn’t the kind of person to lose her head.

So she knocked with confidence, having to wait for much less time than she would have if Sirius had been the one she was waiting for. Remus stepped out with a coat on and a Gryffindor scarf around his neck, clearly one he’d been lent by Sirius.

“Hi,” he smiled rather shyly, closing the door behind him carefully, “Sirius sends his love.”

Lily brushed her long red hair from her face and swept it back, offering Remus a one-armed hug, which he accepted with a look of slight surprise.

“You look nice.”

It was a perfectly innocent comment for him to make, but she still felt rather touched. For starters, it meant he _liked_ her. Following him down the steps out of the building, Lily wondered just how much of the world he was used to.

“Thanks, it’s a new skirt. How’s living with Sirius? How’s living here generally?”

Remus gave her a good-natured smile and nodded in the way she’d been expecting.

“It’s wonderful, I’ve got so much and I really get on with Sirius. It’s just good to be out of there.”

Lily was sure that it wasn’t a _lie,_ but she slowed down to look at Remus a little harder this time. “I can imagine you’re pretty grateful and such,” she said carefully, “but this world isn’t perfect either. If you have things that are issues or worrying you, then Sirius won’t mind hearing. Nor do I, even. I love Sirius, but he can be a lot of noise and action sometimes,” she chuckled softly and Remus looked as though he had to agree with her, if he was a little reluctant to.

“I did live around people for a long time, most of the time,” he pointed out fairly, “you’re not wrong about him being loud, but it’s not _work_ to live with him. I like him.” A faint blush spread across Remus’s cheeks, but Lily attributed it to the cold weather rather than the way he _really_ liked him. “It’s more like…” He fiddled with the tassels on the scarf, reluctant to continue.

“Like?” She asked softly, unsure of how much Sirius and Remus talked about things but knowing it was always good to have an outsider.

“Well, this sounds stupid, but there are parts of the past I’m desperate to leave behind and I just can’t,” he told her, looking resolutely forward as they walked through the chilly street, Lily shivering even though she was wearing far more layers than Remus.

She shook her head slowly, wondering if he was feeling _bad_ about that fact for some reason. It was something Sirius surely understood, too.

“Like what?”

“I- Christ, you’ll think-” He shook his head, “things just unnerve me, things which shouldn’t and things which I don’t even understand. It would just be nice to be normal, you know?” He smiled wryly as Lily gave his arm a squeeze and nodded.

“Of course. But those kind of things take time and we all have them, even people who seem to have their whole life pieced together. Does the stuff that unnerves you come into contact with you a lot?”

“Well, yeah,” he sighed, “Sirius has tried to help, but it’s not really very easy when I’m terrified of windows.”

She frowned – it seemed a legitimate enough fear, but it was definitely not one which could be fixed or avoided as easily as some. “Why windows, or do you have no idea?”

“There weren’t any on the camp,” he shrugged, “I thought that, but then there also aren’t any doors or carpets or anything, so why would I get unnerved by one thing in particular?”

She turned a corner with him, finding an alleyway from which she could apparate the man to this business which would look into his past with them, and looked thoughtful.

“Was there anything with a window before that?”

Remus’s face seemed to sort through several emotions before deciding on an untelling sort of blankness, but there was a hint of realisation there, though it was quickly suppressed with a shudder she just about noticed. Maybe that was their answer, whatever he’d realised…

But if she’d driven the conversation down that route already, she felt bad – bad and eager to steer it back towards something which would make him a little more cheerful.

“So, James and I were planning on holding a party for Sirius’s birthday and we were wondering whether you wanted to help us plan it? And come, of course, but that’s a given.”

“You know,” he remarked, “I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a party. Not one without just family members,” Remus smiled, “but I’d like to give him a fun night, when’s his birthday?”

“November the third,” she stopped, offering Remus an arm and turning on the spot with him with a loud _crack._

Lily recovered from the apparition without difficulty, but Remus was pressed up against a wall, his eyes closed tightly as he breathed as though he had been running for a long time. Sirius had warned her about this, but she still felt quite sorry for the man as he gradually picked himself back up and offered her a slightly nauseous looking smile.

“Sorry, not good at that. I’ve barely done magical travel for years, except the odd portkey…”

“It’s alright. James was worse his first time,” she grinned, linking her arm in Remus’s to keep him steady, “he actually did throw up, it wasn’t pretty. You’ll probably get used to it soon enough, though it’ll be better once you’ve learnt to do it yourself.”

“You think I could?” He raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, why not?”

Remus subconsciously reached to check his wand was still in his pocket, something he seemed to be doing a lot of lately.

“I’m a bit behind. I’m never going to learn half the stuff you did at Hogwarts and it’s _difficult_ to apparate.”

Lily, who at eleven years old had believed she would be behind and failing every class compared to her peers who had always known about magic, shook her head quickly.

“You will learn, and you’ll pick it up faster because you won’t have to be taught in a class full of other people or have to follow certain plans. Besides, a lot of the lessons we had were on things like History of Magic and Astronomy and whilst they were _very_ interesting, you don’t need to know any of them to be able to do the actual spells, you can just read about them,” she assured the man, stepping out of the dingy alleyway she had apparated into to reveal a street not unlike the one they had just left, but apparently much further away. “You can learn things on a basis of need, I suppose,” she smiled encouragingly, “you know, cleaning spells might be useful, but you’re never going to need to make a tortoise into a teapot, so that’s not something you’ll have to worry about. Besides, once you’ve got the basics with casting spells, you can look them up in books and do more or less any of them with a bit of practice. You’re behind, but not as much as you probably think you are…”

Remus smiled a little more at that, nodding rather hopefully as they entered a building which claimed to be a records office and Lily approached the elderly man at the desk with a smile.

The man lingered back a little, as though he wasn’t used to talking, but she nudged him forward encouragingly.

“Hello. I was wondering if I could look at my family history?”

He presented the diagram of a family tree in his neat, careful writing and Lily reached into her bag for the money – she’d had it changed for Sirius, who got quite confused about Muggle notes and coins and was something of a lost cause when it came to them.

“Ah, Mr Lupin!” The man squinted down at the paper and beckoned him forward, “we’ve had a look already and there’s quite some information for you…"

* * *

 

_“So?_ Lily just got back to their place, she said you had a nice time. _”  
_ _  
_Sirius had asked the question without even greeting Remus, or seeing his face, walking into the kitchen from his time with James with a stupid grin. Slowly, he turned around from where he had been chopping tomatoes and smiled broadly.  
  
He’d been almost a little _too_ excited about the day’s findings, but Lily had pointed out to him that it was a big deal and he had every right to be, which had been something of an encouragement to him.

“I have some family,” he said softly, brushing himself down and taking a seat opposite Sirius at the table. His heart was still pounding in his chest from his response to the news – was it excitement? Exhilaration? Nervousness? Either way, he was filled with a bubbling happiness not unlike that which he had experienced when Sirius invited him to live here, “on my mum’s side, they’re still around.”

“Who?”

Sirius spoke with such enthusiasm that he was touched, delighted that a man who could not even stand his own family was taking such an active interest in his.

“My mum’s mother is still alive,” he said, eyes bright with delight, “she’s very old, but I have an address for her. And,” he sat up a little straighter, as though he’d been wanting to tell Sirius this for a long time now, “and her brother’s still alive, he has a wife and apparently they had two children.”

“Cousins!” Sirius beamed and nodded eagerly – it meant a lot to see that, given his own cousin had tried to do them some serious injury the other day, but maybe it was just nice for Sirius to see an example of a family which wasn’t like that. “Do you have their address too?”

He nodded slightly, but the nerves settled in at that part. It was one thing knowing he had a family, but he wanted to _meet_ them – but therein came the problem of having to explain to them that he was not dead and lived with the man who attacked him for years, which he obviously couldn’t. Yet there seemed to be no adequate explanation for why he wasn’t dead as they had assumed him to be.

“You don’t ever _have_ to meet them, you know that?” Sirius checked, frowning a little, “but I’m sure they’re good people.”

“I just can’t see that they’ll believe me,” he pointed out, “I barely remember my uncle. I don’t think he was married when I lost my parents and I’m fairly sure he lived out of the country. And after I got bitten, I didn’t get to see my grandma much either…”

Sirius nodded a little, but Remus had to consider he probably didn’t understood what it meant to him. He hated his family but had the benefit of looking quite a lot like them (from the look of his cousin). Remus had no _idea_ whether he would stick out or fit in.

“You should just try…” He suggest, looking quite earnest at the matter, “you’ve got little _cousins,_ Remus. They’ll love you, you’re great with kids!”

He raised his eyebrow, fairly sure Sirius had never seen him around kids before. It was one thing trying to be nice to him, but that just sounded ridiculous.

“I saw you with those little kids on the camp,” he lowered his voice, “making them eat fruit, making sure they kept out of the way of Greyback.”

“Yeah,” he frowned, “only because it’s the sensible thing to do. I didn’t want them to be _hurt,_ but that doesn’t make me great with them. What if I scare these kids somehow? What if they just don’t like me?”

Sirius’s smile glinted in his eyes as well as his face and he shook his head fervently, hair flying around his face. “They’d be mad not to like you, Rem.”

In all honest, being _liked_ was not really a luxury he’d had the chance to worry about for a long time – with Greyback, it was more important just not to be hated deeply (which he was by the end of it) and being respected enough that people didn’t try to pick fights with you (somehow, he had been lucky there, probably because his abilities to read were of some use to the rest of the camp). With Sirius and the others, though, they wanted to be _friends_ with him and do things together out of choice. The only other person he had been sure actually liked him was Ezra, but that had been a bit different.

“I’m likeable?”

It slipped out before he’d even meant it to – there were far greater concerns in the world, after all. But really, he _wanted_ to be liked. So many times he had been told that wizards were awful to werewolves, hating them, seeing them as dirt and scum. Was it so wrong to _enjoy_ being liked? It made him feel good that Sirius wanted to spend time with him…

Sirius rolled his eyes. “You’re funny, you’re kind, you’re good conversation and you’re a decent person, Remus, you’re very likeable. You’ve been here only a few days and you’ve already got friends, come on.”

His cheeks turned slightly pink, torn between joy at what Sirius was saying about him and embarrassment that he needed somebody to patch up his ego like this, but it wasn’t _horrible_ either.

“Start with your grandma,” he nodded, decisive all of a sudden, “she’ll see your mother in you, and decent mothers _know_ that kind of thing. You don’t have to answer all the questions, you could tell her you got adopted far away and they couldn’t track you down for some reason.”

He swallowed hard, fiddling with the paper on his lap. It would mean returning to Wales, which a part of him _ached_ for, but the thought of rejection from the only people he had left was enough to put him off. Perhaps he needed more time… Would that make him more _human?_ More acceptable? They weren’t even wizards…

Beside him, Sirius squeezed his shoulder gently and sighed.

“You love worrying, don’t you? Even about good news?”

“Sorry,” Remus grimaced, “I’ve come to accept that life has a way of things going wrong when you need them to work out for you.” He smiled apologetically, but there was pain behind it. He tried hard not to think about where he would have been if Greyback had not broken in the second time. Still a werewolf, of course. But with his parents, a proper wizard – happy enough, well-fed and not in a situation where even walking into shops scared him. There was a chance he even could have gone to Hogwarts, had Dumbledore worked something out for him…

And it didn’t even seem _that_ unreasonable, because he would still be a werewolf in that instance.

“Do you have _any_ family who are okay?”

Sirius’s own experience was probably making him more doubtful of the success of his own, making the answer rather helpful.

“Yeah, actually,” he smiled, “a cousin, Andromeda. She’s Bellatrix’s sister, actually. I know,” he nodded at the look on the younger man’s face, “it’s weird. But she was like me, she married a Muggle-born man and has a daughter with him. And she’s great. Kids aren’t judgemental like adults, Re. They won’t hate you.”

A little more heartened by that fact, he nodded and folded the paper to stow away in the pocket of his shirt. It was a decision he would have to finalise at some other point in terms of where and how, because it seemed best to go alone, but he wanted to do it. Even if they were sceptical, he could at least try. And if it _was_ successful, perhaps he would find a little bit more out about his parents. The matter had been raised so often recently that it seemed as good a time as any to keep it in the air.

For now, he just had to stow away the twists and turns of change on his body, stick his chin up and try moving forwards into a future where things might be a little better than they had with Greyback…

* * *

  
With Remus apparently more convinced by the idea of finding his family, plans forming for him to investigate Peter Pettigrew and his efforts to think of somewhere to spend the next full moon, the man was beginning to seem rather busy. Sirius had noticed that he appeared happier and weller than ever, but by the time he retired to bed at the end of the day, he really _was_ tired, a combination of a busy life and the copious amounts of fresh air he tried to get, claiming he missed the outdoors, even if he most certainly did not miss Greyback.

Sirius was only more comfortable with his presence, too, even if there was the slightly awkward fact of his true feelings towards Remus he had to dodge around – but he was apt at hiding feelings after living with parents like his. It was just a little sadder to have to do so this time, because Remus was _wonderful._ He was just vulnerable and busy, much too busy to be interested in Sirius, he was sure.

But they had become more comfortable around each other, day by day. Remus had been pretty open from the start (Sirius had seen him at his worst) and Sirius certainly didn’t mind flaunting his barely clothed body in the mornings or after showers, but the only other person he’d been able to be emotionally open to was James. It wasn’t to the same depth with Remus, but he didn’t feel a need to force a smile and carry on as normal as he had done on many long nights in the Gryffindor common room at school.

And those nights certainly came – they came when he read things in the news about attacks, or when the Order seemed to be failing to gain support, but they also came when there was no reason for them to, when he found himself lying on the sofa and finding no energy to do _anything_ but stare at the rain outside of the window.

Remus had been out of the house when he’d woken up (he had left a thorough note in his endearing handwriting), getting some fresh air and buying some more milk whilst he was at it with the cash they kept lying around for such things. The walks usually took a while, it was nothing new, but Sirius felt as though he had been on the sofa for days by the time the man returned, carefully patting his pocket to check his wand was still there as he did ever so often.

“Hey…”

Usually his smile would have sent Sirius’s mind bouncing, but today it felt as though everything had been dampened by the rain – Remus, too. As he carefully shrugged his coat off, it appeared he had been drenched by it.

“You’re wet.”

It wasn’t really a greeting, but he wasn’t feeling many words today and Remus himself looked a little distracted by his coat and the bottle of milk, though he barely seemed to have noticed the rain.

“Oh, it was raining. I’m just used to getting wet when it rains, I’ll be okay.”

He smiled vaguely – there often seemed to be a vagueness to him these days, though maybe he was just mild. Either way, it was as though his emotions weren’t as intense as Sirius’s, at least not as often. On the flip side, he didn’t end up on the sofa like this, it seemed.

“I’ll make us some tea, shall I?”

The pureblood looked up – Remus was brushing the hair from his face with his hand now and had moved to stand before him without him even noticing. Clearly, he hadn’t replied – and he didn’t this time, but soon he could hear the man moving around in the kitchen, humming very softly under his breath a tune Sirius knew he must have picked up from through the wall separating their rooms.

Time seemed to pass like a substance he could never quite understand. Sometimes it would move slowly, like the wax slowly shifting up the lava lamp in the corner of the room (Remus liked to watch it, it was sweet). At other times, it fell in huge, heavy drops like rain, passing suddenly and all at once. The werewolf seemed to be in the kitchen for a long time but when he returned, he was by Sirius in an instance, pressing a mug into his hands.

“You’re cold, Sirius. Really cold…”

“Am I?”

The mug didn’t make his hands feel any way in particular – they felt slightly numb, but Remus pressed a hand to his forehead and it felt warm and slightly damp. Sighing, he checked his own.

“Do you feel ill?”

He shrugged; it would have been too much effort to ascertain that right now, yet the other man seemed to think that was enough.

“I think you should go back to bed, Sirius.”

Sirius _wanted_ to open his mouth and protest, to say that getting _out_ of bed was his only achievement all morning and that it would be throwing it all away, but he struggled to find the energy. Besides, maybe he was ill. It wasn’t like anyone had ever taken care of him when he was sick, not properly. James had tried, but he was about as good at healing as any teenage boy, offering his friends sickly treats to help him. Mrs Potter had been sweet, but Sirius had shied away from her when ill, not wanting to infect the woman. He’d been lucky enough not to get sick enough to visit Madam Pomfrey much at Hogwarts, either… Or perhaps not so much that someone forced him to go.

It hadn’t been the case in childhood, though. He could remember being only around aged seven or eight and feeling sore and heavy. It felt as though a brass band had taken up residence inside his head and sweat had collected in droplets on his forehead. Yet as much as he had cried for his mother, father, younger brother – _anyone_ for just a glass of water for his dry mouth, nobody had come. Not until the house elf had come on a laundry round to find him tangled in his sheets, crying out weakly, had he been given any kind of potion.

It had been long and exhausting, but surely he had hardened to it now?

“I’ll _carry you_ if you don’t move…”

Remus was speaking firmly now, his mug on the coffee table and his hands on Sirius’s shoulders, holding gently. “You’ve glassed over. Come on, get into bed, you’re sick.”

It hadn’t mattered to anyone when he was a child? Why would it now? But his head was aching slightly and it was easier just to force himself up than to listen to what Remus was saying to convince him, staggering towards the bedroom.

The other man wavered at the door. Sirius’s room wasn’t a _private_ place, but he’d only been in their once or twice – they tended to gravitate towards Remus’s room with the cheerful red curtains and abundance of blankets when they weren’t elsewhere in the house. For lack of possessions, it was quite tidy.

His own was a different case – clothes were strewn across the floor and the curtains hung in a perpetual state of uncertainty, half open, revealing sunlight but little more of the world. And the sheets on his bed were as much of a tangled mess as they had been on that day he had been so, so sick and his parents had not batted an eyelid.

“Come in, whatever.” He slumped down onto the pillows, lying sideways on a bed strewn with half-used tissues and bits of cigarette ash.

Remus didn’t seem to notice, though. Far from precariously perching on the end of the messy bed, he took a seat by Sirius’s head and patted down his pillows with the manner of a man who had only ever seen, and never tried, to do so before.

“When did you last have a drink?”

Feeling as though it was an interrogation, Sirius actually took a moment to realise Remus was trying to _help,_ rolling up his sleeves and taking the tissues from the bed one at a time – he at least saved Sirius some dignity there, piling them beside the bed rather than throwing them away himself.

“Yesterday, probably.”

He hadn’t really thought about it until now, but his mouth _did_ feel quite dry. Other things had concerned him more – or perhaps nothing had concerned him at all, but Remus was forcing him into the day in a way which was making him think about these simple questions.

“That’s not going to help…” He seized the dirty mug beside the bed and turned away, tapping it with his wand and muttering a spell under his breath several times. After a few ‘aguamenti’s, the mug was returned to the small table full of water. Another time, Sirius would have congratulated him on the rate he was picking up spells, but he was slightly more _concerned_ about how the room was spinning.

“Drink it, Sirius.”

Again, it was only in an effort to stop Remus talking so much that he picked up the mug, but he drank it like a greedy child, licking drops from the edge of his lips and groaning softly, not realising how much he needed it until this moment. Maybe Remus did know best, maybe he was right to listen… In a way, it was easy.

“Have you had anything to eat? I can make you something?”

Again, the hand pressed to his forehead and Remus started to pile the blankets on top of him. He was still half-dressed, a pair of jeans paired with the t-shirt he had worn to bed, but the other man apparently had no time for such niceties. He groaned, bunching the blankets around himself.

“I feel sick. Don’t make me eat…”

“Alright, but maybe some toast later. Will it help you to sleep for a bit longer? I’ll find you a potion and you can get some rest.”

Once more, he nodded, though his face was buried in the pillows, ashamed to have Remus see him like this. It was stupid – he had seen Remus at far worse, but Sirius was attractive and he _knew_ it. Right now he was pale and sickly, with matted hair and dry lips. It was easy to flaunt his best self, but it made him want to hide his worst from everyone’s view.

The weight from the bed lifted and Remus closed his curtains for the first time in a while, hurrying away from the window as he always tended to and disappearing from the room for just a second, armed with a small green bottle in hand upon his return.

“You should sit up to drink this, it’ll be easier.”

Sirius wouldn’t have sat up for _anything_ right now, but he lifted his head from the pillows to take it, hair draped around his face as a way of shielding it from Remus, who was much too busy topping up the mug of water and adding another blanket.

It tasted bad, but they always did – though it came with the promise of a reduced headache and the stiffness in his limbs to ease a little. As though it was a cue, Remus took the empty bottle and rose from the bed again with a kind of soft smile, though the vagueness was gone from it.

“I’ll come and check on you in a couple of hours, but I can leave the door open? Shout if you need anything?”

Sirius was unsure whether _anyone_ who was _supposed_ to be able to look after him – his parents – had told him to shout if he needed anything. He wasn’t entirely sure, even, what was reasonable to ask for, but Remus was already positioning the door so it was ajar and his head was becoming fuzzy and sleepy.

“Mm, alright.”

Two feet padded softly out of the room and time returned to its tricks, dropping fast and heavy, this time on Sirius’s aching head, pushing him into an unwillful, uneasy sleep.

* * *

 

_He was eight again now, back in that sickbed. But this time, it was worse. Sweat soaked through the sheets, his body damp as though he had been in the rain. Yet he could smell salt, too; he could taste blood in his mouth like if he did not swallow, it would fill and fill it until it spilled out onto the sheets too._

_This only heightened the stress. His bedsheets tangled around his legs and chest and neck, constricting tighter and tighter the more he struggled. Soon, though, he would run out of energy to do so, would be pulled into something blacker than black was supposed to be, something so terrifying yet so blissful._

_And though his heart pounded within his chest, the sound filled the room like the beat of a drum. Erratic, unstable, the heart of a boy filled with fear – or perhaps it wasn’t, because the footsteps came just as fast, racing towards him. Yet they were not urgent, they were_ angry, _belonging to a figure who only made him wish his eyes would roll further into his forehead and it would_ stop.

_He tried to cry out, but the blood wet his mouth and it was still so dry, lips moving wordlessly. There was no hope, but he still sought it, screaming silently as the woman came closer, her shrieks tearing at his every nerve as they became clearer – words, curse words, words which would worsen the pain beyond belief. Silently, he begged for it, if only because he might black out and it would be over faster. Spots of red and black formed before his eyes, the world spinning and contorting as his body shook, yet not of its own accord-_

With a shuddering gasp, the blood flowed away from his mouth. It was still dry, but his lungs found the air they had been gasping for. As though exhausted from his work, his beating heart began to slow a little as every clenched muscle loosened so much he felt as though he could not move. Sweat was covering him from head to toe, but the woman’s shouts were so far they no longer seemed _real_ now and the only hand touching him was gentle, if too warm for him.

“Wha- Wher-?”

Still tangled within the sheets, he struggled for clarity, but the hands of another worked quickly to free him. All his limbs ached, but it was dull and heavy now, inviting sleep, not struggle.

“You’re safe, Sirius. You’re not with them. It’s just Remus. You’re safe.”

The voice repeated those words like a mantra, lulling and dulling as he was mercifully offered cold water upon his forehead too cool his sweating body. Seconds later, it had been offered to his lips, too, and though he barely felt strong enough to drink it, he lapped like a dog on a summer’s day.

“It was a nightmare. You’re ill. But you’re safe here…”

Unable to help himself, unable to understand where the energy for it even _came_ from, he let out a dry sob. Gone was the confident, cocky man. In his place sat a broken, feverish boy who just wanted _someone_ to care for him when he could barely keep his eyes open.

And though it was not a mother who offered him this, he felt arms around him, half-holding, half-supporting his limp body so he did not have to _think_ as he gasped and wept into the bony shoulder offered to him.

The tears mixed with sweat and the water and the grease from his hair sticking to him until he looked like an ill-assessment of a person who had never seen a human, but a hand was travelling slowly up and down his back, rubbing gently as his heart slowed to match the pace.

“You’re just sick, Sirius,” Remus whispered, “you’re okay. I’ll stay with you, nobody else can come here.”

It was truly the _will_ for it to be true that caused Sirius to believe him, shuddering in the arms before he could even think about who this was and what it meant for him. Right now, he smelt of safety and home – _this_ was where home was – and he craved it. Though the sobs slowly subsided, his nose remained buried in the now-damp wool of the jumper, inhaling his scent like his life depended on it.

Remus remained still, light to the touch and softer than anything Sirius was sure he had ever felt before. He only pulled away when he felt too hot to remain, stripping the covers back like a child who could not quite coordinate the movement yet. But a hand reached his chest and pushed him back gently.

“I’ve got it, Si. Lie still, now. You don’t need to do anything, you’re safe in here.”

And now he could smell Remus and see sunlight trickling in through the curtains and hear music tinkling from the room next door, it was far easier to believe. He offered a watery nod and let out a shaky sigh.

“You’ve got a fever, that’s why it’s so bad…”

Sweet Remus, kind Remus had pushed all the hair from his forehead and was bathing his entire face in cool water. Without blinking an eye, he followed this by pulling up the shirt on his chest and dabbing at him with the same cool flannel. He whined, horrified to need this treatment so that Remus offered him the flannel to do it himself, but Sirius realised how much he needed it and fell silent once again, still and mute until the cloth had been removed and his shirt gently pulled back down.

“I’ll get you something for it, you’ll have something, right?” He bit his lip and Sirius found himself attempting the same – he had little in for that kind of illness, stocking only for injuries and accidents. “I can go out otherwise,” he offered, “when you’re well enough for me to do that.”

It would have required Remus to floo to the Leaky Cauldron by himself and walk into a wizarding apothecary without the safety of a second wizard in a place where people were attempting to hurt him, but those were more than just passing thoughts, because Remus was now taking his socks off and he was letting out a groan of relief.

With the cool water and the gentle touches, Sirius found himself a little more responsive than he had been, though only enough to mumble a word of apology to Remus.

“Sorry…”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he told him quietly, his voice somehow soothing despite the headache, “you cared for me when I was sick. And you’re not being pathetic here, you’re really very ill. I’m going to get you some more water and some potion to help you cool down a bit and sleep some more and you can get back to sleep.”

“Stay with me?” Sirius whispered, _hating_ how he sounded but knowing it would make it much harder for his mother to return to him in his dreams if Remus was there the moment he started to show the outward signs of them. He’d make it up to him later, somehow.

“Of course,” Remus picked himself up again, but his tone didn’t change as he looked down at the messy bed, “I’m not leaving you when you’re like this. You’ve just got to get through a few more hours and it’ll take a turn for the better.”

A few minutes later, he had returned from the bathroom with the last of the potions, holding absolutely anything which claimed it could help prevent pain, pouring them into a mug for Sirius so he could get them over with.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, “I couldn’t read them very fast and you can’t take certain ones with other ones or it’s dangerous. You’ve just got to drink this…” He handed the mug over, watching Sirius struggle to drink it down – no potions were particularly nice, after all. But Sirius managed to swallow eventually and sink back into the pillows.

The sleep which consumed him this time was, mercifully, almost peaceful.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank the existence of cheese as a food group for getting me through this fanfiction

For all the spells he had tried, Remus was getting very good at _Aguamenti_ as he dampened the flannel yet again and pressed it to Sirius’s warm forehead. He could feel the heat radiating from the man, yet the pureblood seemed to be shivering, devoting all the last dregs of his energy to shivering he wasn’t supposed to be doing.   
  
As though it might help, he found himself whispering comforting things as he slept, hoping for the look of anguish and discomfort to fall from Sirius’s white face.

“You’re okay… You’re just sick, Sirius. I’ve got you.”

He remained still, droplets of water trickling down to his thick eyelashes, but that was the desired response. He needed sleep more than anything else.

On the camp, lycanthropy was clearly the most pressing cause for people to need healing, and whilst living outside meant people had to harden up to things pretty quickly, everyone became ill at some point. Around the age of fourteen, Remus had caught a bout of something which had knocked him down for weeks. He barely remembered it, except for lying on the floor outside it an effort to keep cool and someone tipping water into his mouth from a dirty mug. People weren’t always _nice_ on the camp, but they hadn’t wanted him to _die._ He’d been hot and cold and too exhausted to do anything but lie still for a couple of days – even opening his eyes made him dizzy – and from the looks of it, Sirius was going through the same about now.

He would stay with him, though. Stay with him and nurse him until it was clear the worst of it had passed and he could head out for a short while to buy some more things they needed.

Nobody on the camp had taught him to do this, but he could remember well enough what helped as a child when he was ill – soft pillows, blankets he could tear off easily and lots of soothing, gentle touches when he needed them. Sirius seemed (weakly) resistant to the help, but Remus saw no shame in it.

The man groaned softly and he pressed a hand to his own forehead, before the pureblood’s and wished he knew how to contact James or Lily to buy them some more potions, but he wasn’t sure how.

“I’ve got you… It’s just a fever.”

From how these things seemed to go, they had to get worse before they got better. Remus had first agreed to stay in the room on the basis that he could sit and read in the dark, but Sirius’s skin was burning up and he needed to cool him down – he’d flung the windows open and stripped off his shirt and blankets, but it was as though every action he took to call him down raised his temperature.

Within his sleep, the man twitched slightly, clearly uncomfortable as his body sought to fight this off.

“Come on, Sirius… You can fight it. You’re dreaming, you’re okay.”

His mouth was so close he was sure his breath was warming him up unhelpfully, but he’d been at it for what felt like hours now and the potions only just seemed to be kicking in. Remus just had to hope they would truly _work,_ because he’d had to read the labels very quickly and didn’t quite understand all of what they were saying – but he had been worried to leave Sirius for long at all and had hurried back to the room.

“You’re doing great…”

He pressed a hand to their foreheads again and sighed – Sirius’s temperature appeared to be falling closer in line with his own.

Slowly and surely, he settled as the temperature did, until he was pale and still on the pillow, clearly exhausted from what he was fighting, but managing to rest a little now.

The sun looked as though it was down and Remus was tired, barely even noticing that he’d not eaten yet that day (in the past, it hadn’t been so abnormal to miss out on those things). Without daring to leave the room for long enough to get his pyjamas, he pulled off his trousers and lay on the bed beside Sirius, the damp flannel still in his hand as he kept a watchful eye on Sirius. But his chest was rising and falling steadily now and Remus’s own eyes were drooping shut…

* * *

  
Sirius was _cold._ No, he wasn’t just cold, he was freezing. He felt as though he had been doused in icy water and left to sit in the snow. His teeth chattered and limbs shivered in an effort to warm him up, but they had so little left to do so that it cost more than it gained him. His lips were surely turning blue with it, he would never be warm again…

Gasping, the man opened both eyes, desperate for something which might offer him some warmth. It was like survival instinct now, every bit of him mustering the last of his energy to put towards warming up. It dulled some of the pain, even, but the shivering was starting to make him feel dizzy.

It was no wonder he was cold – it was almost as though someone had planned it.

The blankets were off, his chest was exposed and his forehead still damp. Though the room was dark, the curtains fluttered in the corner – someone had opened the window widely, letting out every last trace of warm air.

He would have closed it, but the thought of moving from the bed was a feat as impossible as climbing Everest and his wand was too far out of reach.

Sirius groaned.

Beside him, someone stirred.

It was only then that he noticed they were even there at all, the reason the blankets were missing – someone was on the bed beside him, wrapped in them, chest rising and falling slowly.

“Wha-?”

He let out a slow moan, trying to peer through the fuzzy darkness and finding it hurt far too much to squint. Sirius was lucky, though, for the man rolled onto his side and he was able to see Remus’s pale face through the gloom. Fast asleep. In his bed. With body heat.

For someone so ill, Sirius moved surprisingly fast to peel the blankets away from Remus – who thankfully showed no sign of struggle – and press his body close to his underneath them. The werewolf let out a soft sigh, but said nothing, tucking himself up closer to Sirius like it had almost been invited.

He had just enough energy to feel a _slight_ tang of delight about being this close before Remus Lupin before falling asleep again.

But when morning came, he was still there…

“Huh?”

It was Remus’s sleepy groan which somehow roused him, though the sleep was very deep. It must have been right in his ear, for Sirius groaned but made no effort to move away from him. This man was like a _furnace_ and his aching body was lapping up the warmth it could not produce itself.

“Shh… Shh…”

He buried his head in Remus Lupin’s shoulder and wished it was slightly less bony and more like what pillows were supposed to be.

A second later, he would have given anything for the boniness, because a hand was gently pushing him off and a rather startled man was looking over his face concernedly.

“Sorry,” he whispered, cheeks turning such a startling shade of red that it looked almost as though _he_ was ill. Luckily, Sirius did not notice. “How are you feeling?”

The cold had worn off, but he still felt exhausted. Every movement seemed to drain him totally – the idea of walking even as far as the bathroom would have been laughable if he even had the energy to laugh. But Remus had responded before he’d even managed to answer that question.

“That good, mm?” He sighed, “Listen, I can get you some more potion. I think you need some.” Remus chewed his lip, holding a hand to Sirius’s forehead and nodding seriously, “You definitely need some. I can be quick, really quick. But I don’t want to leave you if you’re not happy with it…”

The mental gymnastics of deciding whether he would prefer the security of having Remus here or having a potion which would do a similar job to Remus by itself was exhausting, but he eventually licked his lips and replied in a horrible, weak little voice.

“You can leave me…”

Remus nodded, but looked as though he would be doing this against his better judgement, in some part. Either way, it was a difficult decision – Sirius knew in the back of his mind that the man would not be able to do it as quickly as he could have done. He could have tried to contact James or Lily, but even explaining that to Remus was too much, so…

“You sure?”

He nodded.

“I’ll be really quick, I promise.”

The mattress lifted slightly as the man stood up and wandered around the room to shut the window. Moments later, he was arranging the blanket over Sirius’s limp, sweaty form, brushing hair off his forehead and tucking him in slightly messily.

“There’s water by the bed for you. If you get too hot, take off the blankets and put some on your chest if you need to. I’ll be back before you know it…”

Remus, still wearing the clothes from the day before, the ones he had slept in, closed the curtains over the window and leaned down, without even thinking, to plant a kiss on Sirius’s sweaty forehead.

He had left before the pureblood could even realise what had happened, apparently fearful that he might actually remember what had happened…

But as the front door shut and the exhaustion engulfed Sirius again, it seemed fairly unlikely he _would_ remember anyway…

* * *

 

Sirius had known he couldn’t have depended on Remus to help keep these things at bay – and it wasn’t even fair to when the man was going out to buy something _he_ needed, but as his body drifted off and his temperature shifted too high, too low, his mind could do little _but_ end up in those dark places once again.

_He was back in Grimmauld Place again, but this time he was older. Wiser, and yet not yet wise enough, the marks on his back were screaming. He knew things, but not when to keep his mouth shut. Not around his mother, or his father. Or even his brother, not any more. Nothing was safe in this house. If only he had been wise enough to know_ that.

_And what he would have given right now for that dingy childhood bedroom where nobody had paid attention to him. He_ wished _nobody had paid attention to him this time and he wished – oh, he wished – for that cool bed with the cold iron frame._

_Down here, there was only dark. Dark and dust, dust on wine bottles which had been charmed not to break however much he threw them. He had tried. It hadn’t worked._

_But now he didn’t even want to throw anything – there were long streaks of red across his back, marks which made every move painful, marks which would have glistened if only a little light was let into the room._

_He huddled into himself, the only source of warmth and comfort in this cellar, but there was little left. Comfort and warmth, like hope, were slowly dying away. Would it end down here? He ached_ so much. _Not just his back; his head, his arms, his legs. The belt around his waist seemed to dig into his skin, laughing harshly at the marks it had made as though it was trying to make one more._

_It took all the energy he had left to lower his body to lie on the cold, stone floor. But he welcomed it – it was getting hotter down here, as though a furnace had been lit. Spread-eagled, Sirius clung desperately to any trace of cool he could muster._

_He was so focused on that that he did not notice the footsteps coming down the stone steps. More than there had been last time – faster, heavier._

_The door creaked open until the light was blinding, pains shooting around his head._

_“He’s yours…” The icy voice of his mother reverberated around him. Dismissive. Uncaring. Her son was bloody and crumbling on the floor and she could only look on, look through his green-grey skin at something nobody could see._

_Beside her, the person quivered, stepping forward. It was his steps which had been so heavy and though Sirius could not see, he could_ smell _who it was as the figure grabbed him by the hair._

_The foul stench of blood and sweat and something purely_ animal _filled his lungs, gagging him until he couldn’t breathe, spluttering and kicking – but to no avail. The man gripped even tighter on his hair, dragging his face up to meet his._

_Sirius’s unfocused, grey eyes locked with the others for only a fraction of a second, but long enough to see the glint of red within them. They were more distracted, though, by the browning blood on his teeth and gums._

_“Food or toy?” He laughed harshly, yanking Sirius up from the ground. He grunted and cried out, attempting to fight back, but Fenrir Greyback kicked him square in the chest and he fell to the stone tiles again. “I SAID, FOOD OR TOY?”_

_Sweat was pouring from his body now – the room was still so hot, so hot he felt as though he was dying of thirst in a desert, as though his brain was shrivelling as this man tried to get across to him._

_Greyback laughed again, kicking Sirius roughly in the side._

_“Pathetic. I think food will do. You’re too weak to become one of us. But I will play with you first.”_

_He leaned down, leering at Sirius as the pureblood gagged in his own mouth. But Greyback had him pinned to the ground and thrash though he might, every fibre in his body was_ begging _him to give up and accept this._

_The werewolf lowered his head, his teeth grazing against Sirius’s neck._

_He screamed._

_Yet that did not stop Greyback. The man only laughed, raising his head just enough to call back to his mother, who lurked indifferent in the shadows._

_“Call the others,” he laughed cruelly. “Bring them all, we’ll share him. Bring_ Remus.”

_Claw-like nails dug into Sirius’s skin and he retched- Cried and screamed and retched until-_

“Sirius?! _Christ_?”

Sirius was lying on the floor, writhing. Above him stood Remus Lupin, who had just poured a mug of water over his head in an effort to wake the man up. Somehow, it had worked.

Sirius burst into tears. Not like those he had been crying in the dream, either, but dry, exhausted sobs. He was so _relieved,_ yet so _scared._ So tired and sore and confused… So _warm._

A pair of strong hands scooped up his shaking body and returned him to the bed, which felt oddly damp. He didn’t really want to think why. All the while, though, cries left his body as though he was a sponge being wrung out, every last ounce of energy being extracted until the cries were dry and weak and Remus was holding a mug to his mouth.

He sipped without even looking what it was, but it didn’t taste like water. Right now, he just had to trust the pale, terrified-looking man who was opening the window again, allowing Sirius to gasp in lungfuls of cold air as his breathing finally slowed.

For a long time, nobody said anything. Tears were finding their way down Sirius’s face now, but he couldn’t say anything for them…

Remus didn’t seem to have anything to say either, but he took Sirius’s clammy hand in one of his and held it, squeezing it gently so Sirius could squeeze back lightly. He didn’t really know why, but it seemed to help.

“You’re here, you’re safe,” he said eventually, sounding rather more shaken-up than he usually did, “I’ve just given you some painkillers and a potion for a dreamless sleep. You’ll be out like a light before you know it and when you wake, you’ll feel much better.”

Sirius nodded, attempting a watery thanks which did not make it past his lips, but Remus wound an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him again. Unable to help himself, he burrowed into the man’s side.

“You know you’re safe, don’t you? That’s never going to happen to you again. The hurting’s over and the fever should be soon too,” he whispered. The words meant very little to Sirius but they _felt_ sweet to his aching head. He nodded rather like a child.

The taller man gently pressed the pillows down, arranging them as though he knew he was supposed to but didn’t really have any idea how – but then, he’d spent around ten years without a pillow – and gently pushed Sirius on the chest to lie him back down again.

“Let’s get you settled down,” he told him gently, carefully putting the layers of blankets on the other side of the bed so Sirius would only have to roll over if he was cold, “you’ll be asleep soon and when you wake, you should probably feel a lot better, the man in the shop told me these potions are good…”

Sirius nodded, his eyes falling shut – they felt so heavy, his entire head did, and the room was starting to cool, slowly becoming a more inviting temperature, and he was happy just to lie here and hold Remus’s weathered hand in his as things became a lot less clear and sleep clouded over him again.

* * *

 

Having to go to Diagon Alley on his own had been a big step for Remus, but he was almost grateful for it – it had been a push in the right direction. Without any major mishaps, he had found the spare change lying around, travelled by floo to the Leaky Cauldron and spoke to someone in a shop about the right thing to give Sirius. Nobody had realised who he was and nobody had threatened him, which was a relief because that was the last thing he needed at the moment. And now Sirius was fast asleep again, looking a lot more peaceful.

That was a relief, too, because the past few hours seemed to have knocked it out of Remus – he wasn’t _really_ sure how to care for someone, other than knowing what it felt like to be ill and limited memories of his parents caring for him. But as long as he managed to get some food in Sirius when he woke, he would probably take a turn for the better. And now he was comfortable leaving him (only leaving the room, with the door wide open so he could hear any signs of trouble), he could go about trying to make up for all the things which he’d not been able to.

Already falling into some kind of routine, he’d taken a quick bath and made some food, only realising how hungry he was when he added another two slices of bread to the toaster after finishing the first lot. After that, he was at a bit of a loss of what to do with himself, but settled for making Sirius some soup for when he woke and returning to his book for a few long, peaceful hours. Though he was worried about the man, it was nice to sit in quiet and get lost in the pages until he heard, very quietly, the sound of the mug being lifted from the table by the bed and found himself dashing into his room with an unnerving kind of urgency.

“Everything okay?”

Sirius was lying in bed, but his eyes were open. He certainly looked unwell – he was still pale and clammy and appeared to be exhausted, but there was a little more brightness in his eyes and he was managing to sip steadily from the mug now.

“Yeah… Just woke up.”

“How are you feeling?” Remus’s hand reached out to check his forehead like it seemed to be doing constantly now. He wasn’t perfect, but he was feeling a lot less hot than he had been for the previous few hours.

Sirius glanced down at his lap and smiled sheepishly, almost childlike. “Tired… Really tired.”

“Of course,” he invited himself to sit on the bed again, assuming boundaries were slightly different when one of them was ill – after stripping Remus off to heal him the first time, Sirius had become very polite and tactful about giving him privacy, which was unusual for him, but really rather nice, “you will be tired for a few days, but you’re looking a bit better. Your body had just been through the mill a bit… Would you like some soup?”

The light brightened in Sirius’s weary eyes a little more and he nodded, which was a good sign. If his appetite was returning, then he was surely on the mend. dOf course, it would probably be a few more days of staying in bed until his strength returned, but it would be far easier for him to do so if he had some food in his stomach for energy.

Practically running, Remus went to fetch him a mug of the soup he’d made earlier – from scratch, if only to give him something to work on for a little while - returning to find Sirius had sat up and had probably used all his energy to do so.

“Drink this and you can get some more sleep,” he offered. This time, he was planning to use the long, quiet hours to plan what to do about meeting his family. He wanted to do it, he really did, but _everything_ seemed to matter, right down to what he wore when he met them, but it was something he didn’t need Sirius for – it was his thing. Keeping quiet about it, though, he watched the pureblood sip slowly from the mug and wipe his mouth on the back of his hand, groaning feebly.

“Better?”

“Bit,” he said tiredly, “ ‘s good soup…”

Remus, not entirely sure why he felt so shy about it, blushed. Maybe it was just the fever talking, but he liked it when Sirius complimented him – it had been a long time since he’d received many kind words from someone, but there was also something about it being Sirius in particular which he liked.

Something he knew very much about, but something he tried to ignore on the basis that it was never going to happen. But even with Sirius lying in bed, pale and sickly looking, it was still very hard not to feel that way about him.

He had to get out, at least for a bit. The minute Sirius was well enough, he would try to go and visit his family. A little distance might separate him from this feeling – though it wasn’t a bad one, he knew it would quickly become so the minute that Sirius met somebody else and he had to watch them cuddle and kiss in the flat together.

“Mm, drink it all and then you could go back to sleep.” He replied, not even thinking as he watched Sirius finish it slowly, the look on his face becoming increasingly tired, but his eyes meeting Remus’s.

“I’m sorry…”

“We all get ill, Sirius, it’s not a problem.”

“Use the floo to contact James and Lily if you need to,” he mumbled tiredly, “put your head in there and call out their names, you can speak to them…”

Remus blinked, convinced that was simply the sickness talking. He trusted Sirius with a lot of things, but he wasn’t going to put his head in a fireplace because a sick man had told him that he could do it in order to talk to James and Lily. It sounded like a fairly good way to get involved in a double-catastrophe, though.

“Alright, sure,” he smiled, humouring Sirius and taking the empty mug off him, brushing some hair off his face again – he couldn’t _stop_ himself from reaching out and it would have looked rather weird if he had stopped his hand from moving in mid-air, so he essentially had to follow through with that one, right? “I might contact James and Lily and you can get some more sleep and have some more soup whenever you wake up next…”

By that point, Sirius had his eyes closed again and Remus, knowing that it would be foolish to start waking him up again with more talking, raised himself from the bed again, smiled at the man one last time, and retreated from the room with a sigh so soft he barely heard it himself.

Much to Remus’s surprise, though, it turned out that Sirius had not been wrong about the whole putting-one’s-head-in-the-fireplace affair to contact people. He had been sitting in the living room with a mirror, trying to work out whether the scars on his face were too clearly visible for meeting Muggle family members who might ask concerned questions about him if they even _believed_ he was who he said he was when there was a loud cracking sound and the fire flashed.

He almost jumped out of his skin, wand already in hand by the time he faced the fireplace and realised it was the slightly bemused-looking head of James Potter. Shock faded into relief that it was someone he knew, before _gratitude_ that the person he’d been wanting to speak to was face-to-face with him in the living room. True, given a choice, he would have picked it to be Lily, on account of knowing her slightly better, but he would have taken an appearance by anyone he was comfortable with at this point.

“Sorry, Remus. We do this,” James laughed slightly awkwardly from his position in the fire, but the other man was still trying to get over the fact his _head_ seemed to be inside of it, which was actually looking even weirder the longer it was there, “Sirius keeps it open for my place. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s fine,” he smiled shyly, kneeling in front of the fire and trying to push aside the fact that his heart was still racing from the shock of it. That wasn’t James’s fault, so he didn’t need to know. “Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yeah,” James grinned apologetically, “didn’t want to worry you. Just wanted to bug him because Lily’s out and I’ve not seen him in a while. If you two are busy together, though, it’s fine…”

He did look slightly put-out by the possibility, for which Remus didn’t really blame him, but he had to shake his head in response anyway.

“I’m sure he’d love to see you, but he’s really ill. I’m so glad you contacted me,” he added, seeing the look on James’s face fall and quickly trying to reassure him, “he’ll be okay, but it was a fever and he’s had some pretty bad dreams with it and I went and got him some new potions by myself but I shouldn’t really have left him.”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair (he had _surely_ picked that up from Sirius, who did it when he was distressed. Or bored. Or just whenever). The fact that the last day had been incredibly stressful was only really hitting him now – it was admittedly a very different kind of stress than one he had felt before, but suddenly the fact he had been the only one able to look after Sirius made him feel _very_ lucky that the pureblood was recovering.

“Oh…” James looked about as worried as Remus had felt over the last few hours, so he tried a small smile to reassure the man, who was surely now getting uncomfortable from poking his head into a fireplace.

“He’s doing a lot better now, I think the fever’s broken, he’s just exhausted and needs to sleep. I’m just not sure about leaving him for too long, the dreams sounded awful.”

“Have you left him at all?” James furrowed his brows, “do you want me to come over? Just for some company and to keep an eye on him when you need to get some sleep.”

Remus really wasn’t very good at accepting things from people without feeling quite guilty about it, but he wanted sleep in a bed which didn’t require him to squish up next to an ill person and fear hurting them, and he knew Sirius would have been more than happy for James to see him like this, from the sound of their friendship.

“That- Yeah, that would be wonderful. Thank you.” He smiled, feeling slightly bad for accepting but knowing it was the best thing for it. Besides, James didn’t seem like the kind of man who would fare well from sitting in his own house, worrying about the state of his friend. “You can stay over if you want, I’m sure. I can sleep on the sofa instead, I don’t mind.”

James laughed, and Remus wasn’t really sure why, but he seemed preoccupied with getting his entire body into the fireplace for him to query it – all he had time to do was back off and climb back onto the sofa before a messy-haired, bespectacled man in a grey t-shirt was standing in the living room with him.

With more warning, Remus would probably have been nervous about seeing James, but right now, he was grateful to have someone else there with him and taking on some of the duty of looking after Sirius, which he was terrible of messing up.

“You look tired,” he raised an eyebrow, flopping onto the sofa and smiling warmly.

“I slept in his room last night,” Remus yawned, practically on cue, “he was really bad. Thank you for coming at such short notice.”

“This is Sirius,” he laughed good-naturedly, “I’ll come for anything, at any time. He only has to ask- In this case, he doesn’t even have to ask. Is he in his room now?”

“Yeah,” Remus dropped his voice, suddenly aware that things were getting louder. He was probably out like a light anyway, but it would have been annoying if they woke him when he needed rest. “He’s been asleep a couple of hours now, he probably needs quite a lot. I gave him some soup earlier too and he has been drinking, so… It’ll be alright, right?”

James nodded, though he looked as though he wasn’t too sure either, which seemed to be comforting and worrying in equal measure. It wasn’t much help, but Remus selfishly appreciated the fact this just wasn’t another thing he was simply very much behind the rest of the world in knowing.

“He’s physically fit and he’s young, he’ll get better. I think you just got lucky with the sort of ill he is, because if he was any better, he’d be whining and crying at you for ice cream all hours of the day.” He chuckled.

Remus laughed, but he secretly wouldn’t have minded running around Sirius fetching ice cream at all. Sitting on the bed with him, eating ice cream together… It sounded more like a treat than an illness.

“How are _you_ keeping?”

The question was so direct and unexpected that Remus stumbled for a moment, shrugging awkwardly and trying to find something to change the subject, but James tapped him gently on the shoulder and gave him a prompting look. “Not feeling ill yourself?”

“Oh… No,” he assured him, “I lived outside for a long time, I guess I got pretty exposed to stuff and resistant,” Remus smiled. He’d not really thought about it, but it was probably one of the only benefits of that lifestyle. He’d had a horrible run of colds and illnesses for the first couple of years there, but he had soon hardened up to things and illness didn’t come to him much now. In fairness (if it could be called that), he did still get a good share of suffering every month with the full moon. “I figured if I was going to get it, I’d have it by now anyway, and I’ve felt the same as usual. Just tired.”

“I’ll stay overnight in his room,” James told him, “you should get some sleep. And get out of the house, actually, if you’ve been holed up with a sick person for days. It sounds awfully boring…”

The way James spoke was fairly reminiscent of Sirius – perhaps it was because they spent quite a lot of time together, but their accents both seemed to suggest they were both from an entirely different world from him – and Lily, for that matter – every letter was being pronounced by him, after all. He could only assume James had been raised in a family as fancy as Sirius’s, though less twisted and evil.

“Well, I do have some family I want to visit. Lily might have mentioned it, I’m not sure,” he smiled almost longingly for a minute, but the thought was crushed a few moments later when he remembered his lack of transportation. “But without Sirius, I have no way of getting there. They’re Muggles…”

“Lily could, if it’s tomorrow?” He offered, stretching and getting up to make himself a hot drink – at which point Remus realised it would probably have been polite to offer him one.

And he was pretty unsure about accepting his offer, too, because it wasn’t even James who would be doing it – and he wasn’t sure how long it would take. But James clapped him on the shoulder as he turned the kettle on, apparently sensing the man’s reluctance to ask anything of him.

“I’ll ask and see if she’s free to, it will only take her five minutes and then for the way back, we can sort you sending her some kind of signal to come back. It’s not an issue, Remus. You must want to see them, right?”

“Right…” He nodded, locating the chocolate biscuits Sirius bought and never ate – leaving them all for him, which was a dangerous game, “Sirius is asleep right now, so you don’t have to be around if you’re busy and want to come back tonight.”

“I told you,” James nudged him gently, “I was bored. Have you ever played chess? I can teach you. Or we can talk about all the annoying things Sirius does when you live with him and you can’t complain because they’re not that big a deal, but they’re also _quite_ irritating.”

“Oh,” Remus said, smiling rather slyly, “like leaving bottles of shampoo on the floor in the bath rather than on the edge so you have to lift them out every time?”

James, who had just been about to stuff two biscuits in his mouth, nodded fervently.

“Exactly! God, I love him. But when he put empty milk bottles back in the fridge, it really made me question that love,” he smirked, handing Remus his mug of tea.

As it was playing out, Remus was glad James had contacted him. Sirius’s best friend wouldn’t have been a horrible person, that much was obvious, but he liked him for who he was now, too. In a weird way, maybe they would become friends themselves at some point.

“And when he tries to cook something really simple and it just goes _wrong_ and you walk in on him eating _burnt grapes,_ of all things. I didn’t even know you could cook grapes.”

“Fairly sure you can’t,” James grinned, taking a seat back on the sofa beside Remus, though a lot less close than Sirius always sat. It was friendly, but lacking a certain intimacy in a way he could not quite put his finger on. “He never had to cook at home or at Hogwarts and I think he just prefers to see what he _can_ do, rather than do what’s the best-tasting thing,” the boy winked, messing up his hair (though it was already pretty messy).

“What was he like at Hogwarts?”

“Same as now, really. I don’t think either of us really grew up that much, except in terms of height…”

“And Sirius didn’t even really manage that very much,” Remus said before he even thought about it, looking slightly alarmed – but James was laughing.

“Tell him that, but only when he’s better. He likes to pretend being very sour about his height,” he grinned, “and then likes it when guys he’s with are really tall.”

Remus was seconds away from squeaking at the thought of what James had just said. Was he tall? Was he really tall? How much taller was he than Sirius? He _felt_ tall, but it was mainly because he’d spent the last ten years around much taller people and that had suddenly changed. How tall were the guys Sirius usually went for? He had no idea how tall he was, maybe he should measure…

“I- Oh yeah?”

He was trying to sound conversational, but it felt a little like he was choking.

“Oh-” James blinked, “I thought you guys had talked about that already-”

“About what?”

“Him liking guys.”

Remus’s flushed face was beginning to return to its normal colour enough for him to pick himself up off the metaphorical ground and reply. “Oh, yeah, we talked about that. We’re- We’re of the same persuasion there, but I didn’t know it was _tall_ guys. He’s not had anyone over since I’ve been here, he’s not seeing anyone. As far as I know. I mean, it’s fine if he is, but I think he knows I’d be happy to hear about it.”

James raised an eyebrow and gave Remus a very long look, but said nothing of it, shaking his head as though it was a conversation for another time and instead sitting forward with a smile.

“You want to start planning his birthday, then? Whilst he’s far too ill to try spying on us and ruining our plans?”

Remus nodded. He could only hope there were not going to be any tall, handsome men invited to the party, because it might just drive him into despair.

* * *

 

After dinner that night, a little more party planning and a long conversation in which James had got Remus up to speed with the developments in the Quidditch league over the past ten years (Remus had explained being from Wales meant he had to support the Harpies, which James apparently seemed fairly impressed by), Remus had checked Sirius one last time and retired to his room to bed.

It was probably a combination of exhaustion from the previous night and security at the fact James was now sleeping in Sirius’s room which meant he was actually able to drift off to sleep quickly, but he still woke when it was barely light, lying in bed as he considered the day ahead.

At best, he could meet some new family members.

At worst – which was always the easier one to think about – he would traumatise them with his scars and have them hate him for making them think he was a boy who they knew was dead, thinking he was out to steal some of his inheritance and a horrible person.

For all he knew, though, perhaps they weren’t in the house. Maybe they would be on holiday, or busy at work. In all honesty, it was hard to know what exactly he _wanted_ from them, but he had to try. If this man had been his mother’s brother, he surely couldn’t be _too_ bad. He would go to him first, a snap decision made on little basis.

The man forced himself to remain in bed a little while longer until it truly became day, slipping out of bed to take a shower and change into a jumper and jeans, hoping they wouldn’t look too out of place where he was going. The door to Sirius’s room was closed now, but there had been no sign or sound of any problems, so he just had to wait for Lily, who had agreed to apparate him to this house and provide any reinforcement he might need.

One day, he would find a way to repay them all for their kindness, but he wasn’t sure how to just yet…

When Lily arrived, she turned up with a smile and a hug for Remus and a toothbrush for her sleeping boyfriend. Him still being asleep was a good excuse for Remus not to talk much, because he was feeling much too nervous to say anything to Lily as he passed her the slip of paper with the address on and he took several deep breaths, really hoping he wouldn’t be sick or nauseous this time.

They disappeared from the living room with a loud _crack,_ one which probably woke James and definitely woke the contents of Remus’s stomach, even though he had skipped breakfast. Gasping a little for air as Lily brushed herself down, he found himself somewhere more familiar than anywhere else, so much so it was eerie.

It wasn’t a place he had ever lived, as far as he knew. But it felt like the type… The air was far fresher than where Sirius lived – cleaner, sharper, colder. The temperature was too, but he almost liked it. Being outdoors was what he had known for a very long time. And the atmosphere here was so still it was almost tranquilising… Dark green firs lined the little track they stood on now, and he could see great, green-grey mountains in the distance, calling him home.

At first, it had been pleasant, but it struck him now, a burst of nostalgia and longing for his parents, his home, the childhood which had been ripped from him. _This_ was where he had belonged and he was only seeing it again now, after so many years. The stillness and the peace had not changed – though he had left this place behind, it had not left him behind. It felt as though, if he carried on down this road for long enough, he would return to a cottage where his drawings were still stuck on the kitchen walls and last summer’s homemade jam sat sticky in its jar on the table.

And it _hurt._ It ripped at him, the knowledge he’d lost these things. This would never really be home now, just a fragment of something he would never get back, teasing him, reminding him. The smells of summer, when it came, would hint to long, lazy evenings in the gardens with his mother and the pitter-patter of rain before it descended into thunder would _reek_ of those moments where his father had scooped him up under one arm and carried him in to keep him dry.

Part of him wanted to cry, to weep for something which had been torn away from him for no reason other than a man’s cruel impulses.

Yet another part had come to accept that years ago and was ready to rejoice, truly, in the things it could still claim from the world. _It wasn’t all bad,_ it sung to him, _he had friends and family and this. Was that not enough to bring him joy, even if it was not the same as what he’d once had?_

Torn between the desire to break down on this lonely road and burst into cartwheels in the nearest open field, he stood transfixed, eyes moving up the mountain. He _knew_ that one, he knew its knobbly shapes and crevices, the sides where sheep grazed and the routes which hikers took. He knew it more than Sirius, or Lily, or James, or Fenrir Greyback and in some way that made it _his._ His world, and not the one he had been so desperate to escape from.

Lily, apparently having been born with lashings of tact, had stepped away from Remus but moved closer again now, resting a hand on his shoulder and looking up at him with deep green eyes that seemed even more in-place here.

“Is this right?”

He nodded. He didn’t need to check a map – he felt it. Stupid though it might sound, it was like a homing beacon had stepped up inside of him, a magnetism which pulled him into his place. Every lungful of fresh air seemed to drain away a little of the pain of the past, however bittersweet the replacing memories were.

“It can’t be far.”

They walked for a little while, passing nothing of significance, but enough for the feeling not to fade. Lily took in the sights like a stranger, but he knew more – he could hear the stream in the distance and know it ran into the same stream he had played in as a child, somewhere along the line. He had perhaps treaded this very road before, years ago. And the sight of the sheep, muddy in their fields, was a picture of long walks on Spring days to see the lambs. It was building him, if anything, slowly growing a kind of inner confidence – not like the happy easiness Sirius seemed to have, but an inner sort of strength and resilience. By the time they reached the cottage, he knew this was what was right to do.

He had never seen it before, but it was exactly what he had hoped. A small cottage with honeysuckle growing up the door, the garden seemed to have a mind of its own and there was a pile of muddy wellies by the brightly-painted, but slightly peeling front door.

Lily squeezed his wrist gently, offering him a smile.

“You know what to do if you need me…”

Remus nodded, but he was fairly sure he wouldn’t need her now.  They were family, right? It would be fine.

He raised a hand to the door, took a deep breath, and knocked.

“Hello?”

Remus couldn’t have said how long he waited for someone to answer the door, because it seemed to take hours and no time at all, but he certainly had the right place. The man opposite him was a little shorter and slightly stockier, his hair thicker and darker than Remus’s, and he had a beard on his chin, but they had very similar dark brown eyes, the ones his mother had once had too.

He blinked at the sight of Remus, but waited for his response.

“Are you David Howell?” He asked quietly, finding himself fidgeting with his sleeve rather nervously.

“That I am,” he smiled, stepping back to look him up and down. Remus felt a little like he was being examined for something, but he supposed the man had a right to. “Can I help you with something?”

He sighed. “It’s about your sister… Hope.”

A look of confusion crossed the man’s face now and his brows furrowed. Remus’s heart was thumping in his chest – this was the closest he’d been to family for years and now it all depended on what this man was going to say to him.

“Oh?” He frowned, looking a little nervous himself now.

“I’ve got some news…”

David nodded slowly, but Remus wasn’t sure what to say – he tried opening his mouth, but it all seemed so dry and he didn’t want to _withhold_ it, but he was also unkeen to blurt it out on the man’s doorstep. He wavered, but a hand pressed onto his shoulder before the answer came.

“Would you like to come in?”

The cottage was fairly small, but quite bright and airy. As they walked in, Remus had to step over several discarded toys and children’s shoes on the floor and avoid the mess of what he assumed was normal family life – but he couldn’t hear anyone else in the house, so he wasn’t too sure. Being lead into a cosy living room, he was offered a seat and took it, perching nervously on the edge of the sofa. David sat in an armchair facing him, but he did not settle either.

“You said this was about Hope, what is it?” He asked, and there was a sadness to his eyes. Something inside Remus was glad to know he wasn’t the only person who missed her…

“I’m her son. I’m Remus.”

The minute he said it, the air in the room seemed to freeze and it was as though all the sound had been sucked out too – David stared at him, jaw halfway open and face pale. Slowly, he shook his head.

“Remus died,” he said quietly, “they all did. I went to the funeral.”

“There was never a body,” Remus whispered, seeing the man’s hand shaking now on the arm of the chair. He didn’t know what to _do,_ but he felt so bad for barging in like this. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know how to tell you. I haven’t been able to for years,” he mumbled, “I only just got out- Oh!”

David had thrown his arms around Remus and was hugging him. It was a different kind of hug from the ones Sirius had given him, too; it was one which made him feel as though he was almost safe now, safe to fall apart completely and crumble inwards. As they broke apart, both men had to take a deep breath to steel themselves.

Without the need for a prompt, he sat back a little in his seat, fist tight in his lap as he was forced to recall the night again.

“When they were a-attacked,” he swallowed roughly, “they got killed. But someone dragged me away. I don’t know who, it’s- It’s difficult to remember those details, but I made it out.”

“Where have you been for all this time? It’s been eleven years?”

He bit his lip, hard. This was where he had to be careful not to say too much, not to raise too many opportunities for question. But he also didn’t want to _lie –_ this man was his uncle, and that was pretty important.

“The person who rescued me from that- He wasn’t a saviour,” he smiled sadly, “he’d helped to coordinate it in the first place, but I didn’t know and he raised me with him in a- a-”

“A what?”

“A cult, a commune,” Remus shrugged, “he was dangerous and I couldn’t get out. I only managed to two or three weeks ago,” he whispered, not daring to look up – he could feel David’s eyes piercing him. “A government agent came to spy and I got badly hurt in a fight and he got me out. I’d wanted out ever since they took me away,” he added quickly, “but it was so dangerous…”

He crumbled a little. This man was family, he’d chosen to tell him this story, but it would never make him look normal. Who, with their little cottage and young children, wanted a nephew who had disappeared for years to join a strange cult?

“I can go now. Sorry. I just thought you should know… They’re gone, he bragged about it, but I’m still here.”

“No,” David said softly, standing up. He clapped Remus on the shoulder and squeezed it gently, “you should stay, you’re family.”

“You don’t want me to leave?”

“When my sister and Lyall died,” he frowned, sitting on the arm of his chair now, meeting Remus’s eye this time, “I didn’t just lose them, I lost my nephew too. I remember seeing you on occasion as a child, Remus. And you’re barking up the wrong tree entirely if you think I wouldn’t want anyone from my family in the house.”

He smiled, and Remus felt a rush of warmth to his chest, staring across at the man and nodding very slightly.

“I can say I’ve gone into a state of shock a bit,” he chuckled quietly, “it’s been years. I still visit the grave, yours too, but if I’m given back family, I’d be daft to turn you out now. I can’t believe you’re here… You look just like them, both of them.”

They were both smiling more broadly now, Remus still fiddling with his sleeve, but with the kind of nervous, excited energy of a man who felt a lot more comfortable in the situation, yet still had a lot to learn about.

“How did you only just get out, though?” David frowned. Remus had been expecting these questions, but he wanted to be as honest as possible. “It was dangerous, yes, but how only now? Why did he even take you? Has he been caught?”

“No,” he said rather heavily, meeting David’s eyes and realising this man was starting to piece together the fact his nephew had been raised by the man who arranged his sister and brother-in-law’s deaths. “He was- I don’t know, he wanted people to join his cult when they were young to indoctrinate them, but I never wanted to be a part of it. He was very violent, I was lucky to get out.”

The other man nodded, trying to swallow all the information and struggling to, which was a feeling Remus himself was well-accustomed to at this point.

“Would you like something to eat or drink, Remus? There are things we should talk about…”

“Just tea, thanks…”

He drifted after him to a charming kitchen filled drawings done by young children stuck up on the wall, not unlike his own childhood kitchens, though a little more up-to-date. “How old are your children?”

“Three and six,” he said warmly, filling mugs and putting cakes onto a plate for them. Remus appreciated that, he was beginning to realise how hungry he was now the worst had worn off. “They’re wonderful and I suppose they’re your cousins, they’d love to meet you.”

He wasn’t sure if he was much good around kids. The children on the camp had seemed to like and respect him, but maybe that was because he was so closely involved with Greyback and made them eat fruit, which actually _was_ good for them in the end. These would probably be different, though – nice, happy children with two parents and a warm house. He could cope with that, surely…

“That would be nice,” he smiled, “and your wife?”

“Of course, I’ve told her all about my family. She’ll be shocked, but it’s _wonderful._ Little Remus Lupin, back with us. Though I suppose you’re not little anymore.” He chuckled – and he had a point; Remus had a good couple of inches on the man, and David wasn’t short. “I suppose you have questions, too?”

He nodded, betraying himself. His questions were bound to be upsetting and offensive to a man who’d seen a horrible side of it, but a very small part of him thought he deserved to know what had happened and David was probably the best person for it. It would be difficult – he would feel raw and exhausted and sad again, but it was _part_ of him, what had happened. _Anything_ he could hear about his parents was precious.

“What happened?”

The older man let out a heavy sigh and took a seat at the table, apparently taking a moment to pull himself together for this pursuit. Remus himself was a little worried about crying in front of him, but he knew he would simply have to turn back on the closed expressions he was so used to using around Greyback the minute his uncle’s mouth opened.

“I didn’t find out until the morning,” he swallowed, “I got a knock on the door and men in black suits – _strange_ suits, mind you – told me something had happened and they needed to come in. They told me an animal had come into the house and attacked the three of you at night and though there were signs of a struggle, your parents had passed away from the bleeding. I asked what had happened to you and they said nobody had found your body, but the signs were all there… They had found some evidence and had come to the conclusion that the wolf had taken more out on you.

“These men came to my mother and father, too, and told her about what had happened to Hope. We were heartbroken,” he whispered, fist slightly clenched, “it was so horrible, so unexpected. Everyone thought the area was so safe. After that, people started to board up their windows and such, moving out of the area altogether. We didn’t have you, but we wanted to bury you all together,” David looked away, unable to meet Remus’s eyes – but the younger man did not mind; his own were glistening with tears.

“Mum had a burial plot for her and Dad and they said that could be used for the three of you. It was only small, but we held a funeral… People from the village came, but we didn’t want to make you into celebrities for your tragic death. Your father’s side were… Odd. Very respectful, but out of place. They’re still there, at the church.”

Remus swallowed hard, pressing his fist to his mouth in an effort to stay silent. His eyes were brimming with tears, reaching the point where his vision became blurry before the inevitable happened and one fell to his cheek, others following in quick succession. David’s voice was thick, but he continued.

“It was a good service, Remus. Obviously, they had nothing planned but your other grandmother found an order of service from their wedding and we chose some of the songs from there to sing again, though it was much sadder. We had beautiful flowers for your mother and one of your toys for you, one taken from your bed.”

His throat felt like sandpaper. The first night away from them, alone and scared with Greyback and other horrible, violent people, Remus had cried for his mother and father, for the safety of his bed and the small black toy dog he liked to cuddle at night. For him, that was it. Perhaps hundreds of miles away, this man had been picking it up in the empty house for a funeral service…

David allowed him a minute this time, though perhaps he needed one too. Both men stared out of the window, swallowing back emotions that threatened to burst, one man’s rekindled and the other’s never fully solved. Remus never had the luxury of closure, or even time to grieve. It had been sit down and shut up from the day he’d been taken. Some nights, it still seemed as though they were only a breath or a whisper away from him, hiding round corners or behind trees. If he got close enough, they might just reappear and transport him back to before it happened. He would be eight again, not unscathed, but happier than he ever realised at the time. He had been _loved._ Did anyone love him now?

“Not long after, it died down again.” David cleared his throat, “they hype, the fear. People removed the boards from their windows and the house you lived in was repaired and new tenants moved in a month later. There was a rumour that they kept a shotgun in every room, but I doubt it was true. Your belongings, your parents’ money and things, they went back to my mother,” he sighed, “we got rid of most of them eventually… We didn’t want old clothes of yours when people out there needed them.”

“Does your mother still have anything?” He whispered, desperate. She could be the worst woman in the world and he would still go begging, right now. “Anything at all?”

David offered a watery smile this time. Remus, so used to losing it all, was taken aback.

“Important things, I would say. Photographs and memories, more things from you and your mother, but we found a strange book from your father as well. His family members must have left it behind when they dealt with his things. She kept it, but none of us can understand it.”

Remus’s heart hammered painfully against his ribcage now. He wanted to _see_ them, to touch them. Perhaps if he was lucky, they would still have a trace of his parents’ smell on them. What he would have given just for that, just for a moment…

“I have something you can have. It’s rightfully yours, they all are now,” he said gruffly, raising himself from the chair and handing Remus a long, dark coat. It was quite unlike the one Sirius had bought for him – heavier, and it seemed to have many pockets on the inside, but he liked it a lot. “This was your father’s, Remus. Forgive me for taking it. His family didn’t claim it and it seemed sad to waste such a coat. But it’s yours to have now…”

Remus held it in his arms as warmth surged through his body. This had been his father’s. This whole coat – and better yet, he could _remember_ it. He could remember tugging on that sleeve and playing with the lapels when he sat on his father’s lap. Somewhere inside, he knew it would fit, too – when he wasn’t using it to sleep under.

“Thank you…” He whispered, “so much, you have no idea.”

The crushing weight of gratitude for a gesture this simple seemed to settle the aching cry inside of him a little. His parents’ had left him, but their love had not – and nor had their memory. He might cling to things like this more than a reasonable person, but at least he _had_ them.

“I’ll contact my mother,” he smiled, “those things belong to you, Remus. There’s money, too. I’m sure you need money?”

He looked rather shrewd, but it was totally accurate. Remus had spent the last few days trying to work out how he was going to get Sirius a birthday present.

“You really don’t have to… I can get a job.”

“It’s your _inheritance,_ Remus.”

“What’s she like?”

David let out a huff of air and sat back in the seat, apparently a lot more stable now they were in ‘business’ mode, even if it was truly a family affair they were discussing. He stroked the beard on his chin thoughtfully, but not enough so to make Remus nervous.

“She’s old, Remus. I’ll be honest with you. She’s old and blind and struggles to remember things. She knows who Remus was, but she’s confused. I can’t promise that she’ll really understand that you’re the little boy who died all those years ago, it’s complicated and she struggles to follow it. I’ll go with you, she knows me, but it won’t be like this…”

Disappointment bubbled in Remus’s stomach, but he knew that he couldn’t have asked the world for anything, really. He still had so much to be grateful for.

“Has she lived a happy life, though?”

He smiled.

“You’re incredibly kind to be caring about that after what you went through, Remus. She has had a happy life – she’s seen three grandchildren. Nowadays, she adores them but forgets their ages and confuses them… It’s just a person getting old, I’m afraid. We’ll all be there one day.”

Right now, Remus felt both so old and so young. He had a gravestone, a death certificate, no doubt. The weight of the world had pressed upon his shoulders for years and now it finally eased, he had begun to realise just how tired he was. Yet things had started to allow hope to trickle through to him. He was only nineteen, barely at the cusp of adulthood. There was a whole life ahead of him and he had freedom, now.

Once, he had wondered whether he would _ever_ escape from Greyback. At twenty, at forty, at sixty? The older man had to die some day and Remus had hoped to take his role then – and disperse the camp, returning children to families and bringing lives back. But part of him had wondered if the rest of his entire life would be days like that. Now, he woke up in the morning to opportunity, to food and warmth and friendship. Maybe he was young, so young. He was slowly learning to hope again.

“I can take you to meet her sometime soon.” David broke the silence, though his voice was soft and welcoming. It was the closest he would ever come to hearing his mother’s voice again, too. “It might be best not to go today, I’d like to find all the things you can have beforehand.”

A little disappointed, he nodded. He’d hoped to see them both today, but this was probably enough.

“Where are you living now? How did you get here, even?”

“Far away from here, in London,” he said vaguely, hoping the man didn’t press it, because Remus wasn’t really sure _where_ he lived any more than that. “A friend of mine gave me a lift and she’ll be coming back later, she wanted to give me some space.”

David collected their empty mugs from the table and took them over to the sink with a nod. “It’s good you’re making friends already.”

He supposed it _was_ good. Lily and James had to be fairly amicable with Remus due solely to the fact he was living with Sirius, who did like him, but they both seemed to be happy to spend time with him on his own and talk to him about things which didn’t relate to Sirius. He’d not bargained on that when he’d realised for the first time that he had left Greyback’s clutches.

“She’s great,” he agreed, finding himself dangerously close to a slightly awkward lull in the conversation when he heard the front door open again and two children run in noisily.

“No snacks! We’ll be having lunch soon! Stay out of the kitchen!” A woman’s voice cried out, but it was apparently in vain, because the kitchen door swung open and two children came hurrying in, their hair slightly damp as they deposited bags in front of the washing machine with cries of ‘Daddy!’ as they ran into their father’s arms.

Remus lingered, unsure of whether he should excuse himself and leave, but that concern was negated when a woman stepped into the room. Her hair was damp, too, but she noticed Remus far faster than the children. She smiled, though raised her eyebrows.

“Who’s this, David?”

His uncle stood up, one child held to his side. The other had noticed Remus now and she was grinning up at him curiously. He smiled back, waving as he carefully folded up the coat, not wanting it to be trampled on.

“Remus, this is my wife, Bethan. Bethan, this is Remus,” he sighed softly. Remus felt a little bad for him – it was quite a big thing to explain when there were children grabbing for his attention.

Rather shyly, he glanced out of the window and then to the children, smiling as the younger one wriggled out of his father’s arms.

“Look! Is that a frog in the garden?”

The pair rushed to look out of the window and he followed. They were sweet, really, standing on their toes in an effort to see something he’d made up so his uncle could get a quiet moment with his wife – his aunt, he supposed. Behind him, the kitchen door closed, leaving him with two children and no frog – which probably wouldn’t hold their attention for much longer.

“Who _are_ you?”

The little girl turned around to face Remus, pushing her hair behind her ear and asserting all the confidence a six year old could muster.

He crouched to her level, offering his hand to shake her tiny one.

“I’m your cousin, Remus. Who are _you?”_

“I’m Bronwyn. My cousin’s _Sam.”_ She frowned, though she took his hand anyway, “you’re not Sam, who are you?”

“Well,” Remus sighed, sitting properly on the floor and crossing his legs now, “It’s nice to meet you, Bronwyn. And your daddy might have told you about his sister, who- er- died before you were born?”

She nodded, curling her hair around her fingers, as though it wasn’t curly enough, even when damp.

“I’m her son,” he smiled warmly, “I didn’t even know I _had_ cousins until recently. And now there’s you and-”

“Dewi,” she sighed, with all the disdain of an older sister watching her brother wriggle around under the kitchen table with some discarded toys. “How old are you? You’re much older than Sam and he’s our cousin.”

“I’m nineteen,” Remus grinned a little. He certainly felt old now – these two were both younger than he had been when he was taken and he had spent their entire lives with Greyback, basically, “a lot older than you. Dewi, do you… Want to come out from under there?”

As the smaller boy wriggled out, took one look at Remus and decided he was interesting enough to grin cheekily at and dive back under the table, the kitchen door opened again and he found himself overwhelmed. The last time he’d been in a meaningful group of people this big, it had been the Order meeting, but now he was sitting on the floor and they were all his _family –_ even if some of them did struggle to get their heads around the idea of having more than one cousin.

The woman stepped over to him with a smile and offered a hand to help him up, shaking it. She looked as though she had been crying more than both of the man had, pulling Remus into a swift hug until he could smell the chlorine from the swimming pool in her hair.

“David told me,” Bethan sniffed, “not that I really knew your parents or you, but you were a sweet little boy when I met you and what happened was so horrible and I’m glad you’re out safe now,” she whispered. “Stay for lunch, yes? I insist, you look like you need some food in you…”

Remus looked at his uncle, who was throwing on an apron and his aunt’s tearful face, at Bronwyn who seemed to be marching around in pursuit of some paper and pens and at the wriggling figure of Dewi under the kitchen table and nodded, his smile more genuine than ever.

This, he supposed, was his family now.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you so, so much to all the people who commented on that last chapter <3 It honestly made me so happy and that's why I felt so damn pumped to get this out today!!  
> it's a long one! but a good one
> 
> (spoiler: it's gay )

James Potter, in Sirius’s opinion, was a pretty talented man. He was good at magic and Quidditch. He was funny and confident and, though he didn’t want to admit it, wasn’t terrible at talking to girls. James Potter was not, however, very good at feeding his sick friend chicken soup and not making a mess out of it, or at least nowhere near as good as Remus was.

It was thanks to the copious healing potions that he had managed to keep himself awake enough to have a meal and stagger into the living room to lie on the sofa for a ‘change of scenery’ – and so James could pull the sweaty sheets from his bed and throw them into the washing machine whilst he worried about how Remus was getting on.

In some ways, he wished _he_ could have apparated him to Wales and seen the place where Remus grew up, but it was more important that he got to go soon and Sirius didn’t like the idea of Remus putting himself out to heal him for this long without having anything to do for himself once in a while. Besides, he was a little less embarrassed about James having to help him get up to pee, because that boy had seen _everything._

Now, though, James was moving around in the kitchen as Sirius waited for the sound of the front door – he seemed to have been doing so for hours, freezing at every small noise until it finally _did_ open and he didn’t even notice until Remus was standing in front of him, dressed in a long, dark coat Sirius had never seen before. Perhaps he was deluded a little from illness, but it made him look _very_ handsome. What he would have given to see the man in a suit…

“Hello…” Remus smiled, looking more cheerful than ever as he sat on the arm of the sofa, “how are you feeling?”

“Better,” Sirius said quickly – that was by-the-by. He wasn’t fully back to normal yet, but his temperature felt much better and the dreams had gone, even if he was still quite tired. “How was it?” It was about as eager as he’d felt in days.

Remus seemed to take a minute to find the words to say, but the look on his face was promising. He was practically _glowing_ with delight, happier than Sirius had ever seen him. And he kept touching the coat he was wearing, turning up the cuffs, pulling it around his shoulders.

“It was wonderful, Sirius. It was- Well, it was difficult,” he said softly, “he told me things I didn’t know about my family and it was hard, but I stayed for lunch with him and my aunt and my little _cousins._ They want to see me on Sunday for lunch and I’m going to meet my grandma soon, though she’s quite old.

“And David gave me this coat. It used to belong to my dad, I _remember_ him wearing it and he kept it and gave it straight over to me to have and it fits so well. They _like_ me, Sirius. My aunt is sweet, but she can shout at those children when she needs to, and David is great and my cousins are adorable, they’re only little.”

He was beaming now, a smile which spread to his entire face, filling it with hope and youth and wellness. Right now, he looked further away from how he had been on the camp than ever before. Sirius, who had expected to feel _jealous_ that Remus had people who loved him so greatly when his own family did not, couldn’t even find it in himself to feel anything but delight for his friend, nodding eagerly.

“Sounds amazing,” he smiled tiredly, “I’m so glad, Re. Really glad…”

“I’m glad, too. And I’m glad you’re doing better…” He leaned forward, pressing his hand on Sirius’s forehead again. It felt much less weird this time and Sirius knew that the worst was definitely over. “You scared me a bit. I thought you getting ill just meant I’d have to run around and get ice cream for you.”

He smiled warmly, but Sirius was already back to trying it on, pouting rather hopefully at the half-blood.

“Ice cream? Please?”

“I don’t know…” Remus said seriously, though the light in his eyes said he had to be teasing, “you’ve been very ill, I wouldn’t want to make you too cold again or something.”

“ _Please?”_

“Oh, alright then.” He laughed, heading towards the kitchen with a skip in his step. It was such a wonderful thing to see the man so happy and to know that there was something else out there in the world for him…

He heard James and Remus exchange brief words in the kitchen, not too bothered to listen in – from the tone of their voices alone, he could tell it was likely a repeat of what had just been said, which was confirmed when Remus practically bounced back into the room with a pot of ice cream and a spoon for Sirius, who groaned longingly.

“You’re the best, Remus, you know that? The absolute best.”

Remus chuckled, unlacing his shoes and returning them to their spot by the front door. The coat stayed on, though – he seemed as though he wanted to keep it on for as long as possible.

“I’m not sure about that, but thank you. How’s your head? Would you like some more of The Hobbit?”

James had been _good_ at looking after Sirius, sure. But Remus had bounced all in handsome and wonderful, offering him ice cream and his soft, calming voice. Spoon firmly jammed in his mouth, Sirius nodded gratefully and watched as the man settled himself in an armchair, curled up comfortably and returned to their story as he settled down to listen to that wonderful voice.

Remus read until he was starting to sound tired and Sirius himself was almost drifting off to sleep. At some point, James had entered the room to listen too, complaining about how much washing up there had been and distractedly looking out of the window for a lot of it - if Sirius had a low concentration of span, then James was terrible, fidgeting and asking questions until Sirius himself was groaning at him to shut up.

It was getting dark by the time James rose from his chair and groaned, ruffling his hair.

“How was Lily when you said goodbye, Remus? She was alright, yeah?”

“She was fine,” he smiled, folding over the corner of the page and closing the book. “I think she was just going to tidy up around the house when she left me. She said she might invite S- us over later in the week…”

Sirius sighed – he knew he was too sleepy, but he had been wishing for him to carry on reading until he fell asleep. He knew it was a stupid, rather selfish desire, but some people had apparently had that done for them as a child every night. The Blacks, meanwhile, had not read to him even once, unless you counted shouting the words in his Latin textbook at him when he failed to learn them as quickly as they liked. Remus was only ever going to do that for him when he was sick, but that sounded like it wasn’t going to happen at all now.

“Get in touch if you need anything, mate.” James gripped his friend’s shoulder and smiled, “both of you,” he added, with a glance at Remus, “I’ll let you know if anything happens at the Order meeting tomorrow, but I doubt it will. You just get rest.”

Sirius grinned and nodded. He didn’t mind missing the meeting when he could be sleeping or sitting with Remus, not really. He was quite used to _not_ being at them having spent so much time with the werewolves and caring for him.

The half-blood rose from the chair and saw James to the door, but it was Sirius who he called to again when he pulled his coat on in the doorway.

“I’ll get us those tickets, yeah?”

“Great!” Sirius called back, though his voice sounded quite weak. The door shut and Remus returned to sit in the armchair again, looking slightly confused.

“Tickets?” He asked, with a kind of vague curiosity that Sirius himself, far too eager to know things, never managed to pull off.

With some difficulty, he pulled himself up a little to lean against the arm of the sofa. “Yeah, we should’ve checked. Though it’d be fun if you came to a Quidditch match with us in a couple of weeks, if you’re up for it.”

The instant reaction on Remus’s face was for it to light up, but it soon fell, and Sirius had multiple hunches as to why he looked so worried so quickly.

“I know they’re busy,” he said quickly, “but we can sit in a quieter bit. Everyone will be looking at the match anyway, and you can have a charm to make you less easily noticed if you’re that worried about it.”

Perhaps on account of the good mood he had been in ever since arriving home, Remus nodded quite happily and smiled.

“I’d like that, then. Thank you… I always wanted to go as a kid but my parents were worried about security at those things. I think they feared seeing Greyback again, and I was quite small anyway.”

He was smiling wryly, and Sirius could sympathise, even in his tired state.

“I wasn’t allowed to go either. My ‘rents thought Quidditch was okay for fitness, but they didn’t want me getting ideas about doing it for a career or something. They said matches were full of hooligans.” He sighed. Walburga and Orion had seriously _hated_ fun – it was difficult to imagine how they actually did enjoy spending their time other than fantasising about the purity of their blood. His mother seemed to enjoy bitchy dinner parties with other families, with lots of wine and in-depth conversation about the Ministry. Orion had been slightly better, but only because he was a little more withdrawn than his mother. He preferred to retire to his study and draft laws which ruined people’s lives quietly, before reading about all sorts of horrible things.

“From what you’ve said,” Remus said softly, climbing out of the chair and sitting on the floor, facing Sirius, “your parents were pretty horrible people in just about every aspect. I get why my parents were worried, but Quidditch matches… James told me more or less everyone has been at least once.”

Sirius sighed. “They were bad, Re…” He didn’t want to go into it now – the dreams had enough – but there was a look on Remus’s face which made him trust the man enough to say a little more. “I’m not over it. The dreams… They were everywhere in them. They were bad…”

Remus’s brown eyes did not break from his, but he reached out a hand to place on top of Sirius’s and give it a gentle squeeze. Sirius knew that there was more than just sympathy there, but understanding.

All he wished was that _his_ parents were the ones who were dead and Remus’s had all the wealth and cushy life his horrible family did instead.

They both stayed in silence for a moment until Remus broke it, but he didn’t remove his hand at all.

“Would you like something else to eat before you go to bed?”

Sirius shook his head, not particularly hungry. James had forced enough soup into him earlier that he would probably sleep and wake for something in the morning. But there was a reluctance to sleep now the thought of the dreams had come back and he sighed heavily. It hadn’t been this way for a long time…

“Do you want to go to bed now? I can help you through to your room and sort out your pillows and stuff so you can get to sleep quicker?”

Sirius allowed himself a moment to marvel at the fact this man was offering to fluff his pillows when he’d not even _had_ any for a good ten years. He smiled, but it was slightly sad.

“I dunno… I’m more with it now, I don’t want the dreams coming back. I might just wait it out until my body forces me to sleep.”

Remus frowned, his grip upon his hand becoming tighter as though on instinct.

“You should really sleep, Sirius. You’re not better yet. You will be, but if you don’t tonight, then I can guarantee you’ll feel worse in the morning.”

Sirius’s head was already starting to ache a bit, but he remained reluctant. The afternoon had been so nice, with Remus reading to him here. But two seconds of conversation had reminded him that the nightmares could come back. To relive that fear and pain, even for seconds in a dream, even with the relief which came the second he woke up, was too much. He didn’t reply, unable to argue against that but not wanting to accept it either.

“Would it help if I stayed in the room or by the door or something? Then, you know, I’d wake if you started thrashing.”

That made Sirius feel guilty, _really_ guilty. Remus was only just better himself (physically, he still had a long way to go psychologically) and he had a full moon coming up, something he’d warned Sirius about, saying he would feel ill again, but not to worry. He was always tired – Sirius _knew_ he didn’t sleep well most nights, he heard him moving around, wide awake – or occasionally falling out of bed in his sleep, a habit Sirius found endearing but was too tactful to comment on – it was just a man getting used to having a bed, after all. But he _really_ wanted Remus there, warm and reassuring even if he was just sleeping beside him. And he _knew_ it would somehow help – it always had when James was there and even if they weren’t as close, they shared a certain amount of intimacy.

“Would that make you… Sleep worse?” He asked quietly, mentally kicking himself for it, but Remus smiled and shook his head.

“I slept in a room full of people for years, it’s kind of what I’m more used to. I might sleep _better._ Sometimes the silence at night is so loud. Not that I don’t prefer it really,” he added hastily, as though fearing the words might be taken for a lack of gratitude, “but it takes some getting used to.”

“Come in mine, then.” Sirius breathed out, rather pleased it had worked out so well – though it would only last until he was better.

Remus raised himself from the ground and nodded. “I’ll just get my blanket so I can go on the floor, then I’ll help you back into you room.”

He snorted. “Come in the bed, Remus. It’s big.”

For anyone else, that might have raised a lot of questions and several eyebrows too, but Remus had come to him from a place where everything was shared, except with one man who enjoyed a monopoly on the finer things and revelled in denying them to others. It only seemed sensible to let him sleep on the other half of it and Remus, who struggled between a reluctance to expect and accept too much from anything, but also to make the most of what he was offered and given, sighed and nodded.

“Just pyjamas, then.”

He returned to the end of Sirius’s moment of delight at the fact he would be sharing a bed with him. It wasn’t using him, not really – it was for support, for both of them, and Remus very much made the choice here. But there were still … Nicer thoughts in his mind. Nicer thoughts which were rather heavily amplified when Remus returned to the room in only a t-shirt and a pair of boxers.

“I thought it would be warmer if there were two of us,” he explained as Sirius looked over, “and this way, I won’t overheat if you need it warmer…”

Sirius nodded, but he wasn’t listening – his eyes were looking over Remus’s arms and legs. They were still heavily scarred and injured – though the new marks seemed to be fading fairly well – but there was no denying that Remus was well-built. He looked _toned,_ not in the way which suggested he spent hours working on it each day, but one which showed he had a lot of strength hidden away in there, gained from how he’d been living for years. His eyes bored into the boxers, wishing Remus wasn’t wearing them at all.

“Hello? Sirius?”

“What- Oh, bed. Sorry.”

He grinned sheepishly, hoping to pass off his momentary lapse as a sign of illness rather than fascination with Remus’s body. It only doubled when he felt the strong arms pull him up and help him across the room.

“Jesus, you’re strong…”

Sirius had thought _he_ was fairly strong, but this was something else altogether. Remus could have _carried_ him, and easily. He could probably have carried two of him, really.

The man laughed, helping Sirius into bed. He might have minded more if it hadn’t meant Remus got to be so close to him, leaning over him to plump up his pillows until Sirius could _smell_ him…

“I’m a werewolf, it’s part of the package, Sirius.”

If truth be told, it was a pretty rough package, but this was a fairly good part of it. Remus seemed to have this strength without even having to do huge amounts of training. It made him feel a bit giddy.

The feeling only intensified when Remus finished sorting Sirius out and lay down in the bed beside him, sighing softly. He could feel his large amounts of body heat and could _almost_ hear his breathing as the man extracted his wand and, after several tries, managed to turn out the light with a quiet ‘nox’.

Sirius closed his eyes, but didn’t fall silent straight away. “You’re getting good at that,” he murmured, “you’re working far harder than anyone did at school.”

“Thanks,” Remus replied, bashful, “it’s just nice to be able to use it. I’ve been capable of it for years, it wasn’t like I had to hide it from anyone either, but there was no real way of controlling it.” He yawned, rolling onto his side, apparently rather comfortable to be sleeping so close to someone now.

Sirius rolled onto his, too, so he would be facing Remus. Out of curiosity, he opened his eyes again and found himself looking at Remus. Close to, even in the dim light of his bedroom, his eyes seemed to have seen too much for his age. There were no wrinkles on his skin, yet they looked tired. It was a horrible thing to fall asleep on, but he supposed they had – he’d been there, helpless (even wanting to help Greyback) the night his parents were killed.

“I’m glad you found a family, your family,” Sirius whispered, as though they were in a Hogwarts dorm and had to keep things quiet at night. “You deserve them, you know? It’s really not how it works at all, but the world kind of owes it to you.”

“They’re great,” he agreed softly, sounding rather tired, “you’ll come with me to meet them sometime, right? As my friend? We don’t have to tell them you were the ‘government agent’ who rescued me if you’d rather not.”

Sirius found he was blushing faintly under the bedclothes, touched that Remus wanted _him_ to meet these people.

“Of course,” he told him, “if it’s important to you, then I want to know.”

Remus didn’t reply, and Sirius’s eyes were closed so he did not notice, but the younger man fell asleep with a smile on his face that night.

* * *

 

Much to the relief of both of them, the fever dreams and the potions had marked a turning point for whatever Sirius was suffering from and with the continued use of them and provisions of soup from Remus, he started to recover fairly well. By the end of the week, he still seemed rather tired, but was up and about and more or less back to his usual self.

The night spent shared in Sirius’s bed had been about as inconsequential as both men dreamed it wouldn’t have to be – Sirius had not suffered any nightmares and, much to his relief, Remus hadn’t snuggled _too_ close to him whilst fast asleep. The next night, he had drifted off on the sofa in the evening and slept in the living room – and by the next, he was no longer so afraid of nightmares that Remus didn’t dare offer to share with him again, in case it raised questions.

His illness had, however, left them with a considerable amount of things to do. Remus had still not heard from David, but was expecting a letter to say he could visit his grandmother (he’d had to explain to him that they did not have a telephone yet). Their joint mission to spy on Peter was well-behind, but Remus was supposed to be visiting him under the pretence of being a Death Eater. Sirius’s birthday was fast approaching, too and though he was trying not to think about it, the full moon was just around the corner.

Which was why Remus and Sirius found themselves sitting in front of piles of paperwork one morning, trying to work out what they were meant to be doing and spending most of the time trying to construct the perfect paper aeroplane – which Remus couldn’t remember the technique for and Sirius relied too much on magic to do.

“I think you can fold the front bit to make it more… Streamlined.”

They were sitting at the dining table, surrounded by untouched parchment – the only thing they had managed to do was write down potential birthday cake ideas for Sirius, which they’d had to stop when they had ended up both craving cake.

“Like this?”

“Stop using your wand!”

Remus laughed, leaning forwards to pull Sirius’s wand from the man with a roll of his eyes.

“I’m a _wizard,_ Remus, it’s what I do.”

“My dad made these with me all the time,” Remus raised his eyebrows, “he never used magic once, it’s cheating.”

Sirius pouted, snatching up another piece of parchment and starting all over again, as though it might make it easier for him.

“So…”

Sirius had the heavy sigh of someone who had been trying to bring the conversation matter down for a short while now, but had not quite managed to bring himself to do so. Remus stopped, wondering what this was going to be about.

“I wanted to talk about the full moon…”

A look of something – disappointment, perhaps – flashed across Remus’s face for just half a second, but his expression soon softened and he nodded at the man.

“Of course, you’ll have questions.” He had known it was coming – Sirius had been around at the last one, but they weren’t close like they were now. In fact, considering how long it had been, it was amazing how close he felt to him already – and how much they had done since Remus had arrived at the flat. “Just ask, you don’t have to be polite and gentle about the subject.”

Sirius smiled gratefully and nodded. “I really should have read up on this before I went on the mission. What… What happens? When do you transform? Where do you think you will this time?”

“When the sun sets and the moon comes up,” Remus told him, “that sounds complicated and on the camp, we didn’t know the time, but you can work it out. My parents paid quite a lot of money for a calendar made by someone who calculated the exact time each month. If you did Astronomy at school, you might be able to look it up, but I’ll make sure I’m out of here long before it starts.

“And we used to transform together, outdoors. But you’d never find me if I did that and I’d be such a danger to people,” Remus shuddered, “my parents would lock me away – in attics or basements or old farmhouses and things like that. Don’t look like that!” He added quickly, for Sirius had an expression of horror on his face, “it’s the safest thing, it’s what I want. It means nobody else gets hurt.”

He sighed, leaning back in his seat a little and fiddling with the aeroplane.

“Transforming alone is different from being in a group. Werewolves expect company and expect blood. The full moons on the camp were, I hate to say it, sometimes less difficult than at home because there were other animals around. Before I was there, I used to attack myself as a wolf because that was all I had. I daresay that will happen again, perhaps more violently, now I’m fully grown and without company.”

Sirius looked a little paler and was grimacing at the sound of that, shaking his head rather hopelessly. “Is there nothing you can do? You can’t have people around in any way, right, however weird? That sounds like it could hurt you a lot…”

“It won’t be worse than last full moon,” Remus said darkly, “I’ll get more injured, but I’ll have more access to potions and things, I daresay. I can heal myself afterwards. You won’t want to deal with that and I’ll have to be in an otherwise empty room locked away. And definitely no humans – don’t even think about coming near me until the sun is fully up, because you _will_ get killed and I’d never forgive myself if that happened. Wolves can’t smell humans who are important to them differently and leave them, it’s all or nothing.”

“Merlin,” Sirius said softly, picking at a spot of dirt on the edge of the table, “I’ll speak to Dumbledore, alright? Or you can. We’ll get you a safe house with a bed or something for when it’s over until you feel safe to apparate.”

Remus smiled wryly, feeling a surge of gratitude for all Sirius was doing here. It was one thing to let him live here, but to offer him so much support at the worst time of his month took a certain type of kindness.

“Does it hurt much?”

Sirius had asked the question in a seemingly casual voice, but Remus could see in his expression that he was concerned. It didn’t make that much sense – Remus had been in much worse pain before, when he had been healed, but he supposed Sirius meant the transformation itself. That was what he would fear the most now, surely, once the knowledge that he could kill or injure someone was gone.

“Yeah… It’s quite painful.”

Sirius looked to be unsure whether to push it, as though morbid curiosity was fighting with manners – probably because nobody was ever really taught about what it was like for werewolves. As a young child, both before and after the trauma of it, he had just cried until he was too exhausted to cry any more…

“How bad?” Sirius practically whispered now. Remus assumed he was thinking in terms of a comparison to the Cruciatus curse, but this was different. That was manufactured pain – it was designed to be the _worst –_ but it went nowhere. Once it was over, it was truly over. The transformations were drawn-out and exhausting for him and the pain got worse and worse until his mind was lost entirely.

He didn’t want to shock Sirius completely, but honesty was probably important. Sirius wasn’t a child who needed lying to about how bad it was.

“Well, I’m changing into a different form,” he said quietly, “everything at once. My organs get too big or too small for my body, so it’s as though… All my organs are undergoing failure at the same time, and my body is changing shape in skin which doesn’t fit it and my minds is becoming more wild and-” He sighed – it was hard to explain. “It’s far worse if you try to fight it. If you let it happen, it still hurts a lot, but that allows the wolf part to take over sooner and then the pain and your response to it is still different. I try to fight against it, cling to every little part of myself I have left, so it hurts a lot.” He sounded steady, but the thought of it was nauseating. Every time, he would cling onto Remus as his body ripped in two, as his blood boiled in veins which could not contain it and his eyes became too huge for their sockets and almost caused him to black out as the colours disappeared from his vision. It made him so terrified now that he could not imagine how he had done it when he was first bitten, when he still had the body of a child and had never experienced that kind of pain before.

Beside him, Sirius was looking horrified, nodding rather slowly and fiddling with the parchment almost rapidly now.

“I- Does it hurt that much to change back?” He said quietly.

Remus shook his head this time, glad it was a less damning answer.

“I usually black out,” he admitted, “my body is out of energy, I’m not trying to fight it and the pain is so bad still that I black out and then don’t feel it.”

The pureblood still looked quite concerned, but he nodded fairly slowly and sighed. “I guess there’s nothing I can do to stop it or make it better?”

“Not that you’re not already doing,” Remus told him, leaning back into the seat, “I’ll be alright, Sirius. I know it’s not nice to hear about but I’ve done this hundreds of times now and I’ve been okay each time. There’s no reason I won’t be this time.”

Sirius gave a tight little smile which made Remus feel slightly guilty for giving him so many of the bloody details. True, if he made any effort to help heal him (which he _definitely_ wasn’t going to ask for but got the impression Sirius was planning on doing it anyway), then he’d see the worst of it anyway – though he already had after the attack and the last full moon…

In an effort to change the subject to something more cheerful, he gave Sirius a nod of encouragement.

“We’ve got your birthday to get through before that, though!”

Though he sounded rather light and excited, Sirius’s birthday was something Remus had probably been putting a bit _too much_ thought into. He didn’t have any money, but he knew he couldn’t get the man nothing when he’d given him so much, which had resulted in him having to be quite creative about it – but he thought it would probably be okay by the time Sirius had his party.

Sirius grinned, a little more interested in that prospect than he had been cheerful about the previous conversation.

“When was the last time you went to a party? It’s gonna be great…”

“You know there’s a party?” Remus blinked – he had assumed the entire thing was a secret. Maybe Sirius had wheedled the truth out of James somehow when he was ill, but he’d be surprised.

Sirius was looking rather triumphant, winking dramatically at him and nodding. “Of course. If you weren’t planning something, I’d throw one myself. This happens every year, Re. I just don’t know what it’s going to be _like._ ”

Remus was the one who smirked this time – it was going to be fairly standard, but James had decided that everyone attending the party should dress _exactly_ as Sirius did – with tight jeans and leather jackets and t-shirts which rode up when you stretched your arms to reveal an annoying amount of chest-

Come to think of it, this party might end up with Remus feeling _incredibly_ attracted to everyone, if they all looked like Sirius. Maybe it turned out that he had a nice friend who looked good in a leather jacket and was sympathetic with werewolves and was the spitting image of Sirius… He allowed himself the fantasy for a good couple of seconds before packing it in and chuckling. He’d be borrowing one of Sirius’s jackets himself, which would mean smelling like him all evening…

“The last time I went to a birthday party, I must have been four,” he nodded. He couldn’t _really_ remember much from when he was that young, but he’d probably been to a party with one of the children in the village and eaten jelly and ice cream and sandwiches cut into little triangles. “I mentioned that to James, actually, and he was nice enough to tell me it wasn’t that different until the end of the night when everyone was a lot more drunk,” he laughed.

Remus wasn’t _planning_ on having too much to drink, at least not when there were strange guests here, because he really wasn’t too keen on doing something stupid or dangerous in front of strangers. But when everyone else had left, there was little harm in having some more, surely…

Sirius nodded slowly, apparently quite keen to convey his own experience.

“I assume you had them when you were young, in some sense?”

“When I was really young, I think. After I was bitten, my parents and sometimes my grandparents would have a birthday tea with me and we’d play games there.”

“I’m the opposite,” Sirius raised an eyebrow, “I’d never had a birthday party until I was sixteen.”

“Never?” Remus asked – he was sure the Blacks were bad, but they certainly had the money for _something_ to celebrate a birthday, even if it was stuffy and horrible like everything else.

“Not properly. I’d have a fancy meal, get some boring presents and be sent off to bed whilst everyone stayed around drinking wine,” he shrugged, “it was more about celebrating me being the heir than actually having fun. I didn’t really know about them until I met James…”

_That_ was strange, it had to be said. Even Remus had played musical statues and pass-the-parcel and he’d lived in a secret werewolf camp in the woods for ten years. It must have shown on his face, because Sirius started laughing.

“Yeah, it was my birthday at school and the topic of childhood parties came up and James and Peter,” he frowned, only ever so slightly, “they started listing off parties they’d had and stuff and I had no idea. So, of course, James had to sort that out for me.”

The frown faded off his face and was replaced with the similar grin he always had when he talked about James.

“What did he do?”

“He basically tried to make my sixteenth birthday make up for all of my childhood birthdays in one. There were stupid games in all the corridors and balloons and cake and he started throwing sweets around in the middle of the Great Hall…”

Remus’s eyes grew bright – even if he hadn’t been able to go to Hogwarts, he wished he could have seen this somehow, because it sounded _amazing._

“So… Do you think he pulled it off? Making up for what you missed out on as a child?”

“Oh, definitely. And don’t think you’re getting away with it. If you’ve missed ten birthdays because you were with Greyback, then we’ll roll it all into one and give you something to _really_ celebrate.”

He groaned, not wanting a fuss made of him. Besides, who would he invite? Sirius, James and Lily, probably. Perhaps his uncle, aunt and cousins – though they couldn’t know about magic. And… He didn’t exactly have any friends to bring along. It wasn’t something Remus was berating himself for – it was hard to make friends for more reason than one and he more or less had what he needed, but it would make for a pretty lonely party compared to the number of people that were apparently coming for Sirius’s (James had noticed how nervous Remus seemed about having so many people in the house whom he didn’t know and had offered him an escape route by floo to his house at any point he needed it, for which he was grateful).

“Ah, but Remus,” Sirius had noticed the look on his friend’s face and was still grinning like an idiot, “we’ll get a chocolate fountain…”

Remus’s heart betrayed him as it always did when it came to that. Sirius seemed to have tapped in quickly to his love of chocolate, which had grown at an alarming rate now he had more access to it. Sirius had once found him sitting alone in the kitchen with a book and two empty chocolate button bags and Remus still hadn’t quite forgiven himself for not hiding them in the bin immediately.

“Fine,” he sighed, though it was clearly fake. “Just me, you and a chocolate fountain, yeah? That’d make up for most of those birthday parties I missed…”

Inside, his stomach squirmed at the mental image of the two of them alone like that – they were alone right now, true – but alone in a scenario where it was Remus’s birthday and Sirius was trying to find a way to make up for all the forgotten ones.

He grinned into his hand. If Sirius Black was involved, he could think of _many_ good ways of making up for that…

* * *

 

When David’s letter for Remus arrived in the post, he had been deep in the middle of planning what food to have at Sirius’s party, on the basis of the fact he _lived_ with him and therefore knew what he liked to eat. It had dropped quietly onto the mat, but the sound was unusual enough to raise four heads, given Sirius never received letters by the Muggle post.

In the presence of James, Lily and Sirius, he had read that his grandmother _did_ seem keen to meet him and whether the second of November would be a good day for it. That had stalled them slightly – it was Sirius’s party that night, but all three had urged him to go, telling him he’d done _enough_ for this party and deserved a chance to meet his family.

It was Sirius who had encouraged him the most, reminding him that his grandmother was old and looking forward to it, that the others could set up for the party and that if Remus was too emotional for it, he really didn’t have to come.

He felt guilty deciding either way, but with the pressure of all three, it had been decided that Sirius would apparate with Remus to his grandmother’s house and go and find somewhere to take a long walk whilst his housemate met the old woman for the first time in years. Remus was just glad David was going to be there too – it was scary enough, but the full moon was getting closer and closer now and he was beginning to feel tired and ill. His uncle had been one thing, but this was an elderly woman and he didn’t want to be impolite and mess things up.

Sirius had helped him choose a shirt to wear to her house (apparently it didn’t really matter what he wore, but Remus wanted to be smart) and seemed to insist on spending an awfully long amount of time checking how Remus looked from every angle before they apparated together. This time, it was a little less nauseating for him, but as they straightened up, Sirius seemed to be bursting with questions as he looked around.

It was not unlike the track near his uncle’s house, but a little more built-up – she seemed to live in a village, but it was overlooked by high hills and mountains. In the distance was the rumble of cars on a slightly bigger road, but there was no sign of it here.

“You grew up here?”

“Near enough, yeah…” He said, distracted. The letter in his hand said she lived at number seventeen; they were standing at the end of the road, by number one. “Not anywhere this big, though.”

Sirius looked around in a kind of awe which made Remus presume he had simply never seen a Muggle village before – but then, he had grown up in London. Anything with houses this close to the countryside was probably something of a shock to him.

“It’s- Merlin, it’s _tiny._ But it’s nice…”

They had started walking now, heading to the door to meet David and his grandma inside. As much as he loved talking to Sirius, Remus didn’t have the words for it right now, smiling rather tightly and nodding a little as he sped up, walking at such a pace that Sirius almost had to jog to keep up.

“You still want to do this?”

They were at number thirteen now and Sirius was beginning to look concerned. Remus _felt_ as though he looked nervous, but Sirius had made a good point when he pointed out this woman’s age – she _wouldn’t_ be around forever and if something happened before he worked up the courage to meet her, then he would definitely never forgive himself.

Number seventeen was a house similar to the rest of them, though its door was blue and there were several photo frames in the front window. Remus swallowed hard now, knowing one likely featured his mother. It wasn’t that alone as much as the fact _every_ time these conversations came up, he seemed unable to handle himself in some way.

Sirius wrapped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed gently, a kind of sideways hug which made him feel a little better.

“I’ll see you later, but take as long as you need,” he smiled, “if you end up missing half of the party, then I’ll just throw another one you _can_ make it to and we’ll have fun there.”

He disappeared before Remus could articulate the gratitude he wished he was better at expressing and the man knocked quietly on the front door, finding himself facing his smiling uncle, who shook his hand quickly.

“Good to see you, Remus. You must have been waiting a long time for my letter?”

He nodded. It had both seemed like a long time and not long at all – everything seemed to go so fast compared to the long, grey days in the camp, especially after Ezra’s death, where all he had wanted was for it to be night so that he could sleep through everything.

“It’s alright, I’ve been busy.”

The older man smiled, stepping back to allow him into the house.

And though he couldn’t remember how this house had truly been ten years ago, Remus could still have said with a reasonable degree of accuracy that it had barely changed. It was, in every way, an old-lady house, with little china cats and fussy mugs and an old lady sitting in an armchair near the window.

“Ma,” David smiled, waving at the woman as he ushered Remus in, “this is Remus, you remember Remus?”

For a horrible moment, silence filled the air and seemed to linger. He’d prepared himself for the eventuality that she had forgotten him, but it still would have been very painful…

David cleared his voice. “Hope’s boy, Ma. Who I told you went missing.”

“ _Remus…”_

She spoke with a quavery, soft old-lady voice as she beckoned him closer and found two hands on his cheeks. With anyone else, he might have jerked away instinctively, but she smelt like powder and rose and things he remembered from before he even thought he had memories of.

“Hi, Grandma…” He whispered, smiling and planting a kiss on her cheek. “It’s me… I grew up…”

The elderly woman looked him over twice – at first, as though she could not believe he was real but, the second time, as though she was unimpressed by something.

“Remus… You’re too thin.” She told him, struggling to get up from her chair until Remus hurried forward to lend her both his hands, “far too thin, like your father…”

He laughed, a strange sort of joy which extended from the fact he was with someone who even knew enough to say that.

“Lovely and tall, though. A fine young man, after some food. Come on…”

Bemused, Remus followed her into the kitchen and watched as she opened her fridge and took out a frying pan.

“You really don’t have to, I have food now…” He started, but she gave him a stern kind of smile, one which told him not to answer back because she knew better and wanted to look after him, and Remus settled into one of her chairs. David lingered in the doorway, apparently wanting to give them space but seeing a need to keep an eye on this elderly woman pottering around her kitchen.

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around,” he said softly, “I wanted to come and find you… I kind of- Er- Couldn’t until now.”

“I missed you,” she told him, “I missed that skinny little boy who was always too pale, however much Hope fed you.”

She loaded scrambled eggs and toast onto a plate and Remus felt _incredibly_ grateful that he had family who loved him enough to sit him down at a table and force him to eat something even after he had disappeared for ten years. She stood, watching, as he started to eat.

“I missed you too,” he said sadly, biting into the eggs and realising he’d missed that recipe too, though _much_ less than most things. “But it was hard for you, you lost all of us at once…”

It was harder to address his grandma than David – she was so old, he wanted to protect her. She seemed slightly confused about things and he didn’t want to upset her, but there were already tears in his eyes.

“My Hope,” she whispered, “I always thought- So cruel, senseless… What happened to her.”

“Animals are like that,” he said slowly, eyebrows furrowed. David was giving him a look, silently telling him to ignore her, but he was curious. “Wolves are like that, aren’t they?”

She looked at him with more clarity in her expression than at any other point so far, shaking her head firmly just once.

“That was no wolf. It was more than a wolf.”

Remus’s grip tightened on his fork – did she know something? Hope had never told her family about wizards (where would it have stopped – could David have told his wife? His children?), but she seemed to know of a greater involvement than this. Yet before he could ask, David had stepped in to help clear up and was shaking his head fondly, apparently assuming this to be a part of the bufuddled old woman.

“Ma, it was a wolf, the police said.” He kissed her cheek, turning to Remus. “Don’t listen to her. It was very traumatic – not your fault – I think she just wanted someone to blame. There was nobody but a wolf.” He said, a little louder.

Of course, David believed there had also been the man who’d taken him away, but he did not realise that was the _same_ person.

She raised her white eyebrows and gave Remus a significant look, but said nothing more on the matter. He was sure, though, that she knew something which David didn’t know _,_ which made him very curious indeed. It didn’t seem as though he would get much of a chance to be alone with her to ask, though.

“Remus, I’ve got some things for you, I got them out of the attic. I’m sure you’ll want to see the photos…”

He disappeared, but only for a second, presenting Remus with a thick photo album as his grandma took his plate of scrambled eggs away from him and started loading _more_ food onto it. He was full now, very full, but he didn’t want to turn them down.

Breath held, Remus turned the first page, finding himself facing a picture of his mother and father on their wedding day and feeling something already tear inside him, because he knew where these pictures would end and how…

It wasn’t easy. Nobody in that room could have pretended it was easy for the three generations to sit at a table and flip through the photo album. David seemed to be distant, his voice rather choked up at points; his grandma actually cried, her shaky old-lady hands gripping the corner of the book a little too hard. And Remus… He wanted to cry _out –_ to clutch this book to his chest until he was somehow transported back to this time. He was forced to settle for looking through it with watery eyes and wiping each grubby tear track with his sleeve when nobody was looking.

The wedding photos faded into ones of a young, happy couple – and soon his mother had a bump – and then there was a baby, a tiny baby with a little bit of hair and two beaming parents and it was _absurd_ to think it was him, but it was. The boy became bigger and his hair lighter, the photos now showing him on the beach, playing in the garden, blowing out the candles on a birthday cake…

It was easy to tell where things went downhill, though. There was a photo of him on Christmas at the age of four, grinning as he unwrapped a toy – but the next were far more sombre, a little boy tucked up in bed with another birthday cake, looking rather unwell. His mother had told her family he’d been diagnosed with a rare health problem – he wasn’t sure what – to explain how ill he suddenly was, and much of his fifth birthday ‘party’ (attended by his grandma) had been spent in bed, trying to make it as good as possible when it could just be the last one he ever had.

He’d made it through, much to his parents’ relief. But from then on, the photos were a little less the picture of a normal, happy childhood. He was thinner, paler and covered up by long sleeves and scarves to hide the scars. What Remus _hadn’t_ noticed at the time, though, was how much thinner and tireder his parents looked with the strain of a son with that condition. A photo of Lyall and Hope on their anniversary (a bit wonky, so he’d probably taken it) showed a man who already had a couple of grey hairs and a woman who looked happy, but exhausted. He had run a finger over that one, swallowing roughly. David said he could have the whole book, but he wanted that one by his bed, or in his wallet. It was something he could hold onto, to pretend they were still there with him in some way.

And then…

He knew it was coming, but the stop was still horrible, abrupt. There was a photo of a smiling Remus in long trousers even though it looked quite sunny, holding a ladybird on the back of his hand and then- Nothing. No wind down, no warning – of course, there had been none. It was a stop as abrupt and horrible as the one which had occurred in real life.

Remus turned the page as a tear threatened to splash onto the photo, finding himself looking at a couple of photographs of flowers, confused.

“They were from the funeral,” David said quietly, tactfully putting a box of tissues in the middle of the table and not looking as Remus helped himself to about five to wipe his face. “We had some film left in the camera and… I just wanted to remember it, for a sense of closure.”

He nodded, but he wasn’t really sure if he _got_ it – what did closure feel like? He’d not been to any funeral for them, not had a chance to give _his_ flowers. Besides, this album had started with wedding photos and ended on this. Part of him wanted to throw it out of a window. Another, more rational part wanted to hug it to his chest and never, ever let it out of his sight.

The man crumbled, not sure what to say or do now, but David had his shoulder in a clasp and was handing his mother several tissues too.

“She was beautiful. My Hope,” she whispered, sniffing. “No mother should have to see that… See what happened…”

Remus wasn’t sure he had the strength in himself for it, but he found himself reaching out a hand and squeezing her wrinkled one gently, even if he was perhaps only comforting her because it gave him a distraction himself.

“I know.” He whispered, “I k-know. She gave me everything and so much more when I had her. I- I miss her.” Remus swallowed. He wanted to be here, but he also wanted to be at home – if that was even what it was – in his room, in his bed. He wanted a chance to let these feelings out in private until Sirius found him at night and they sat together in silence and he tried to work through them. _Why_ they still hurt like open, bleeding wounds after all these years, he could not understand. It had been so easy, for so long – he thought about them, but pushed it aside. They were gone, it didn’t matter, he had what he had.

But now, it was as though salt was being rubbed into the wounds until he was screaming. And it likely would be until he fell apart in a veritable stranger’s kitchen with his arms wrapped around a leather-bound photo album…

For a moment, they sat in silence. When they did move, he wasn’t sure who did first, but they returned to the living room and he found himself perching on the sofa whilst his grandma fell asleep in her armchair, David bringing boxes into the room for Remus.

“These aren’t much, I’m afraid. But there are photos and some jewellery which belonged to your mother, if you’d like that?”

Remus nodded – he had no use for jewellery, but he would have taken anything – cutlery, socks, anything at all. It was bad enough that they were gone, but he’d had precious little to remember them by until very recently. Even photographs brought back so much for him.

“Do you mind if I go through most of this stuff when I get home?” He asked – he was more than eager to look, but doing it now would probably be too much and though they _were_ family, they didn’t know each other all that well. There was only so much he was comfortable with them seeing. Greyback had mocked anyone who cried in front of him, and it was pretty hard to shake that off completely.

The older man nodded, “Of course. If there’s anything good, let me know. If there’s anything you want explaining, just write. Or- Well, we were wondering if you’d like to come for lunch one Sunday? It’s nothing fancy, but Bethan does a very good roast lamb and your cousins would love to see you some more.”

“Yeah- I, that would be nice,” he smiled, still stroking the album with his thumb, though he was peering into the boxes at his feet, noticing the Muggle passport which had once belonged to his mother. “If I can get to yours.”

“This friend of yours, whoever brings you here each time, he’s welcome to come too,” he said graciously – and Remus felt a surge of gratitude with a hint of worry. Would Sirius be willing to meet his family? Did that have certain connotations he hadn’t thought of? Would he mind hanging about with his little cousins?

He would have dwelled more on the topic had his grandmother not opened her eyes and blinked confusedly at him until he felt like an _imposter_ and wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself.

“David? Who’s this?”

The colour drained from his uncle’s face, but he seemed to have an immense amount of patience as he turned to her. “This is Remus, Ma, your grandson, Hope’s boy. Remus, remember?”

“Remus… Lovely…” She smiled, looking him over. “I remember when you were only this tall, reading you stories.”

He’d been warned about this, but it was still unnerving to see, really – she had completely lost all trace of recognition. He was just a nice young man in her living room.

“She does it with everyone,” David whispered – it was what he needed to hear, really, “she does it with Bethan and my children and they see her every week. I’m sorry…”

If he was being totally honest, Remus wasn’t really used to elderly people – she’d been much younger when he last knew her, of course, and werewolves didn’t tend to live as long as normal wizards (he wasn’t sure how they compared to Muggles), so nobody on the camp was that old either. At least, they weren’t old enough to be forgetting things like this. It was sad, but he was just glad he was rescued when he was – sixth months later and he could have been looking at an empty armchair.

* * *

It wasn’t long after that when Remus left, excusing himself on the basis of having a party to go to. It was nice not to be able to lie, but he always didn’t want to be imposing on a weary old woman any longer than he was welcome and she seemed to be in a cycle of forgetting and remembering him. She didn’t forget who David was at any point, but she knew it was going to be very bad news if she did.

Lily who met him to go home this time – he was always astounded she did it with such good grace when she didn’t even know him – and the pair apparated together laden with boxes. There was a lot to sort through, a lot to deal with, both in the boxes and emotionally. But right now, he wanted to put on a brave face and a smile, because it was Sirius’s birthday and he didn’t want things getting in the way of that.

This was supposed to be a fun day, his birthday. James had taught him a lot about having fun birthdays and Christmases and Sundays, all things Sirius Black had once thought were stuffy and horrible for everyone. And it _was_ going to be fun, especially when everyone arrived and the alcohol started flowing, but right now, he was just _worried._ Remus had been so nervous in the morning – with good reason – and him meeting his family was a big deal, but so was him coming to the party. Sirius didn’t really think he would enjoy it as much if Remus was locked away in his bedroom or hiding in James and Lily’s house, but he wasn’t going to _stop_ him. Was it selfish that he wanted Remus there, in a good mood? Probably. But it wasn’t really that terrible to wish happiness on someone…

When Remus and Lily returned to the flat – which was now becoming covered in balloons and interesting wall hangings James had found, he didn’t look as bad as he feared. Just tired. Heavy, almost. And carrying a large box.

He hurried forward, removing it from Remus  wrapping his arms around him. Perhaps he should have asked, but the taller man leaned into it rather readily as Lily found the tact to drag the boxes over to his room.

“How was it?”

His lips were practically against Remus’s neck, but neither man showed any reluctance to pull out of the hug for a good few moments, though the werewolf did seem to have to come to terms with himself when they finally did.

“It- Yeah,” he smiled, that slightly lopsided smile which gave Sirius a bit of an ache in his chest for some reason, “she was lovely, but she’s an old woman so one minute I was her grandson and the next I was just a young man in her living room.”

Sirius reached a hand up and squeezed his shoulder gently. He didn’t _really_ know what this was like, but he’d seen his grandmother start forgetting who he was (in his case, that was more of a positive, though) and it had to be hard to have that from the start.

“If you see her more regularly, she might start to remember you,” he offered, “how about we take some Muggle photos of you and they can go up in her house so she remembers?”

Remus grinned, slightly bemused. “Nobody’s taken a photo of me for a _long_ time.”

Sirius could think of plenty of photos of Remus he would be very willing to take, and a party was a good enough excuse as any to get them. He’d _also_ been told the man would be dressing up tonight, which was enough to make his heart go slightly too fast. Remus look good enough in jeans and a jumper, let alone something more.

“Listen,” the man told him quietly, brushing his hair out of his face, “there was a photo album which I looked through with them and that was a lot. David gave me these two boxes of photos and things, but I thought I’d wait. I don’t know what’s in there, but I can’t promise it won’t make me feel like… Not partying.”

He nodded, touched Remus was putting a hold on this for his party. “Are you sure? You don’t have to come, Remus. You don’t even have to have a reason, maybe you just… Don’t like loud things.”

Remus laughed this time, shaking his head and making his way towards his room. “I lived with about forty people non-stop for ten years, Sirius, I’m very used to noise. I’ll see you when I’m ready?”

He closed the door behind him, leaving Sirius to change whilst he got into whatever he was going to be wearing that night. This time, though, the pureblood put in even more effort than normal – not just because all eyes were going to be on him, but because _Remus’s_ were, and because he wanted to have him stare at him and his tight-hugging trousers and leather jacket. By the time he knocked on his door, he was all but on the verge of _asking_ him to check his jeans were tight enough.

Except when Remus opened his own, Sirius was met with _several_ surprises.

For starters, he was dressed _exactly_ like Sirius – same tight jeans, same leather jacket and a t-shirt. All that differed was the fact Remus was wearing his purple striped socks rather than the black ones Sirius always wore.

Secondly, he looked _amazing._ He might have been worried about him stealing the look, if it wasn’t for the fact Remus wore it differently, but so well. His eyes were drawn – perhaps a little too readily – to the bulge in his jeans and the way the clothes hid actual muscles underneath. The sight made Sirius’s stomach do interesting things.

And apparently his voicebox too.

“I- Oh- I-”

“Yeah?” Remus grinned casually, messing up his hair in the way Sirius so often did, “is there a problem, Sirius? Do you need a hand with something?”

_Of course_ this had been James’s plan; have them all dress like him, which made Sirius slightly jealous and annoyed until he realised he was still the best looking in the room. But Remus invited competition, the type of competition he was definitely willing to enter.

“Are those my jeans?” He asked, voice about three octaves higher than he’d intended it to be.

Remus looked down at his legs and grinned, apparently unaware of the full extent of the effect he was having on Sirius. “Yeah, sorry. We used magic to add about an extra foot onto them but I’ll shrink them back down.”

Sirius wanted Remus to lift him up into his arms and kiss him right _there,_ however cocky he was about being tall, or slightly smug, or-

“Is the party starting, then?” He leaned in the doorframe, a move that made Sirius want to _die._ He suddenly felt as though he did not know what to do with his limbs, but if they weren’t up against Remus, then he was doing it wrong.

He nodded, grabbing a beer from the nearest table. He would need it tonight – enough so that his vision became too wobbly to focus on the way the jeans shaped Remus. It wasn’t what he typically saw him in, but… As some kind of wonderful treat from the universe at large… There was much less left to the imagination than in his usual jeans. It was just a shame that he would be peeling off his own tonight.

And did Remus _realise_ the effect he was having on him? Sirius was sure he was swaying his hips a little as he closed the door and headed into the room. The sweet, shy man suddenly seemed to have an agenda – to make Sirius as weak at the knees as possible.

Or maybe he was overthinking it. When Remus took a drink from his beer, he suddenly looked rather shy again. He still wanted to pull him close into his arms, but a knock at the door did well to stifle that, and he found himself met with the beaming faces of old school friends. It seemed his moments to admire Remus in peace were now lost.

But they would come back.

* * *

 

“Do you want another beer?”

“WHAT?”

“DO YOU WANT ANOTHER BEER?”

The thud of the bass and the drink inside of Remus was lowering his inhibition and damaging his hearing – a veritable stranger was offering him another beer as he stared at Sirius from across the room. The party had been going for some time – people were starting to clear off and he felt tired, but the music was still on and last time he checked, two people had been _in_ his room, kissing rather furiously. He’d rather tactically not fully shut the door so they couldn’t try anything.

Sirius beamed at him from by the window – a beer in his hand though he wasn’t really drunk. Neither of them were – just… Buzzing. He was enjoying it, but the idea of getting a little fresh air was becoming immensely appealing and, before he knew it, he had crossed the living room to enter Sirius’s bedroom, which was mercifully empty, pushing the window open and sticking his head out of it with a long sigh…

“Remus?”

He wasn’t sure how long he’d been in there, but Sirius was standing by the door now and the music had stopped. People were laughing as they made their way out of the building noisily, but all Remus had been focusing on were the twinkling lights of the city beyond. It was very, very new to him, but still comforting – if he squinted, they were like stars.

“Yeah?” He ducked, narrowly avoiding hitting his head as he moved it out of the window.

“You okay? You’ve been in here a while.”

“Just dizzy,” he grinned slightly, “getting some fresh air, clearing my ears out. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to say that.”

Sirius’s eyes became concerned – he stepped closer and sat on the floor (it was steadier than a bed when one was dizzy), but Remus sat beside him without difficulty.

“I’m fine, really. Did you enjoy your party?”

He was still clutching a bottle of beer in his hand, cooling his body through it. His heart was slowing now, but it still felt loud, as though replacing the throb of the bass with its own beating.

“Loads,” Sirius said softly, resting his head against Remus’s shoulder. “Glad you came.”

The half-blood smiled, shaking his head. “I couldn’t miss it, Si. Not when you’ve done so much for me…”

His heart seemed to ache a little. There was so much more he wanted to say to him about his gratitude, about how he felt, but it was often hard to find the words to do so. Remus sighed, running his finger up and down the bottle of beer.

“Tired?”

It was only at moments like this when Sirius became soft, concerned – gentle, even. He just wasn’t like it around others. Was it wrong that it made Remus feel special? Important, maybe?

“I’ll sleep in a bit,” he tipped his head to rest it on top of Sirius’s. It had been a long day, a weird day… The family visit, gaining so much only to realise how much he had lost, seeing Sirius in the thick and buzz of a party across the room and thinking… Thinking things he couldn’t say.

Beside him, Sirius sighed so heavily both their bodies moved; without thinking, Remus reached to wrap an arm around his shoulders, pulling him close, when he asked the strangest question.

“What did Ezra look like?”

There was a pause, but Remus shrugged. He still thought about Ezra sometimes, he’d never really had a chance to mourn the end of his life, but the relationship had come to an end when he was killed and… He was fairly sure he was over it. Over it enough to make peace with the fact he had other interests.

“Tall. Dark. Stubbly,” he shrugged a little, “Handsome, I guess. With hindsight, maybe not as much as you might think, but I did like him.”

“It- It ended when Greyback- Didn’t it?”

Sirius had tilted his head up to look at Remus with curious grey eyes and the man could not find it in his heart to mind being asked these questions.

“Yeah, we were together until then.”

“Are you… Over him?” Sirius asked, the words even softer this time. Remus watched his lips form the words, soft and pink and smooth. By comparison, his were surely chapped and rough.

He smiled slightly, brushing a hand through his hair and meeting the man’s eyes, unable to quite understand why he was asking but knowing by instinct to carry on talking. “Yes, Sirius. It was- It was an important relationship for me at the time and it ended horribly. But we weren’t- It wasn’t like we were about to get married or anything.”

Had he loved Ezra, even? It was hard to tell. It was more like love than everything else on the camp, but that was easy. He had certainly loved him in some way, but Remus had never _been_ in love any other time to make a comparison. What had mattered was that it wasn’t like the other things.

“It doesn’t hurt any more,” he explained, “not like some things do. It hurts that it died, but not that I don’t have him as a boyfriend.”

Sirius shifted closer, resting a hand on Remus’s side – gentle, yet intimate. “You know how brave you are, don’t you?” He whispered, fingers brushing over his shirt just slightly. “Going through all that when you could have broken so easily.”

Colour flushed to Remus’s cheeks. He wasn’t _brave,_ per se. He’d just done what he could with what he had, but Sirius was kind and wonderful and he _wanted_ to think so for just a moment.

“I dunno, Sirius. I- You’ve seen some shit too. It wasn’t like either of us had a choice about it.”

The pureblood paused for a moment, as though he was weighing up that statement, but seemed eventually to concur. “I guess so, but…”

He cut off, and the silence lingered. Unable to help himself, Remus moved a hand just to brush a stray hair off Sirius’s face and found himself shifting closer in full, as though desperate to be near this man in every single way. He wanted… He wanted more than this. If he hadn’t been drinking, he might have been more rational, more sensible about their situation and less willing to get this close to Sirius. But it had been a long, tiring day and they _both_ liked this, so it was harmless. Sirius certainly seemed to think so, leaning his head against Remus’s fingers as a question filled his own mind.

“What about you, then?” He asked quietly, heart hammering in his chest. Remus had wanted to delve into this for a while now, but there was never an opportune moment to raise it. “You know about Ezra. Have you ever had anyone… Like that?”

He was met with a wry smile which had a hint of sadness to it. “I’m shit at it, Remus. I’m all shout and no talk. I’ve had plenty of guys back here, but it was never for more than a night. We had _fun,_ but nothing serious. For a while, that was what I wanted. But I don’t think I want that any more…”

Remus nodded slightly, eyebrows a little raised. “You’ve never had anyone back when I’ve been here,” he said in a small voice, almost hopeful, “unless you’re very quiet about it, but these things tend not to be.”

“I had other things going on. It was a little perspective,” he chuckled, closing his eyes. The lashes were as dark as his hair and his face still looked so young… “I didn’t want to-”

“What?” He was hanging onto his every word, because instinct was telling him to, because Sirius seemed to be taking them somewhere and finally, he wanted to go.

But then he stopped, pulling away a little and Remus felt his heart sink several feet down through his body until Sirius stood up clumsily and spoke.

“Sorry. Need some air…” He mumbled, sticking his head out of the window and taking deep lungfuls as Remus had done earlier on. Not wanting to stand up himself, it took the half-blood rather longer to get up and face the window, his hands on the glass as he shuddered.

“Fuck- You don’t like windows,” Sirius muttered, “we can move away, come on…”

He shook his head, leaning it out alongside Sirius, so they were shoulder-to-shoulder and staring at the twinkling lights of city streets and cars. They weren’t quite the stars – that dusty, urban sprawl which promised stardom and rarely delivered. But this was what Sirius’s life _was_ and he wanted in.

“I worked out why…” He said eventually, breath forming clouds of vapour in the cold November air, “the window thing. It’s not that complicated.”

“Oh?”

“When I was first bitten, the sound which woke me, the thing that woke me up and had me facing terror was my window breaking,” he said softly, “I was asleep, my window broke and- Greyback was right there. The idea of that glass smashing in the dead of night again. It’s kind of stupid, I should be fearing a _wolf,_ not a window.”

He shivered, though it was not to do with the cold. Without a word, Sirius wrapped an arm around his waist and nodded.

“It’s not stupid.”

Remus didn’t know what to say, but he didn’t want the conversation to end yet, sighing as he pulled his head out of the window. “Thank you, Sirius.”

“It’s nothing.”

“No.” He said quickly, watching as Sirius tried to pull his head of the window, but struggled. “Not just for that, for everything. You did far more than you had to, you know that.” His hair was caught in the latch and he was struggling; Remus leaned forward to untangle it. “You’ve turned your life upside down for me- stay still – I can’t tell you how grateful I am.”

Sirius emerged from the window. Though his hair was messy and a little windswept, eyes bright and expression soft, as though the night was only just beginning and it was just theirs, only theirs.

“Some people are worth turning their lives upside down for…”

Remus was not sure what came over him in that moment – whether it was the beer or his thudding heart or the rumble of distant traffic and aeroplanes through this new world; more likely, it was the way Sirius’s eyes met his with so much understanding, so much delight – but his hands moved without thought, cupping Sirius’s pale face in them as his lips _finally,_ after waiting for what felt like so long, pressed against the smooth, cool ones.

It was _this._ It was this it had been missing – parts of his life were full of holes and this wouldn’t fix it – but as Sirius’s hands wound around his neck and Remus’s lowered to his waist, their lips never leaving one another’s, he knew this was _right._ This was _good_ and _safe._ This was what home was – the smell of Sirius’s shampoo on his hair and the feel of his skin and the way he had to stand on his toes ever so slightly to reach, until Remus was pulling him closer into his arms and suddenly Greyback and the pair and horrors seemed so far away. They weren’t gone – the horrors of the past were never washed away. But here he was, finally building something…

It was Sirius’s breathy laugh which filled the room when they broke apart – not nervous, but warm, as comforting as the first time he had heard it. He didn’t move away, or sigh or say they could not go on, but he simply stayed and smiled as the half-blood brushed a finger across his lips and found himself laughing too – relieved, delighted, exhausted.

“How long-?” Sirius asked slowly, looking rather giddy and pleased.

“A little while.” The smile on Remus’s face was lopsided, but it could not have been any bigger for all the money in the world. “And you…?”

For just a fleeting second, he feared Sirius might brush it off – might say it was just the drink and the starlight, but he grinned and ran a hand through his hair, blushing a little.

“Way too long.”

He couldn’t even work out if that was a good thing or not – had they been feeling this way for a while and not realised, missing opportunities? Or did that mean Sirius was just _very_ secure in how he felt about him, meaning this was only more real? Right now, though, it hardly mattered, because they both _did_ feel this way and he had just _kissed_ Sirius Black and it had been even better than he’d imagined.

So he did it again.

This time, it was a little slower, a little less driven by urge and desperation and hidden feelings, more a chance to enjoy it – for Remus to enjoy the feel of Sirius’s hands at the nape of his neck and for him to wrap his arms around the man’s smaller body and hold him as though he was keeping him safe, close to him and away from harm. Only when their lips pulled apart did he meet his eyes again, finding a light in them he had only seen precious few times before.

This time, Sirius seemed to have gained a little bit of his bravado and cockiness back, but that was what had pulled Remus in in the first place, so it only made him smile more.

“Cheap birthday present, eh?” He grinned, earning the gentle bite on his lip Remus provided in response.

“You wish, Sirius Black. For all you know, I might be getting you horrible socks. This could only be the start of it.”

“I hope so,” Sirius replied, a little quieter, burrowing his face into Remus’s neck and kissing it just once, a lot more gently than Remus knew he was capable of, “I like this.”

“I like it too…” He whispered, internally rejoicing at how _honest_ he was able to be with him after feeling like this. It hadn’t even been that long, but sometimes, it felt like it had been this way for months on end.

Of course, there were teething issues. Remus still got nervous going out to places, so dates would have been a bit tricky. Besides, they _lived_ together – they would have very little space between one another if an argument occurred and it would be hard to set lines and boundaries for them. If anything did happen, Remus wouldn’t want to lose Sirius and Sirius could potentially find himself having to leave Remus homeless, broke and hungry. But in these first, sweet moments, there were no thoughts of the sort. They were happy, they both were, and it was incredibly cruel of the universe to take that away so quickly. Tonight was a party and if they wanted to be in each other’s arms… Then they should.

Sirius seemed to have had a fleeting consideration of the fact this might one day become complicated, too, for he sighed and pulled away slightly to look Remus over, but he didn’t break the spell just yet either, instead reaching for the scarred hand and squeezing it gently with his own, which was smooth and cool to Remus.

“You’re so warm,” he smiled, “you’re so warm. The night we shared a bed, you just seemed to radiate heat.”

Remus laughed softly. It wasn’t especially funny; he was just happy to be able to do this, gently pulling Sirius back up to the window to look out of it with him. “I’ve been told, but I certainly don’t get to enjoy it myself. Well, it’s not so bad here, because it’s all warm for me, but give me time and I’ll be freezing again…”

He felt an arm slide around his waist and pull him into a warm hug. They hadn’t hugged much, not even since becoming friends, but he enjoyed it almost as much as the kiss, though for different reasons. It felt safe, secure – and in the back of his mind, he had always known he could have this, even if the kissing part was a new and wonderful introduction to their relationship.

“I suppose,” Remus said slowly, ducking down a little to make the best out of the hug, “I suppose I should give you some more kisses, though. Given it is your birthday.”

In honesty, he felt like it was _his_ birthday, or all of them he’d missed rolled into one giant firework show, but without the actual fireworks. And if only _Sirius’s_ birthday, not even his own, was this good, then he felt slightly exhilarated to think of what Sirius might be planning for the amazing birthday he had been threatening to give him.

With that thought, among all the others of Sirius’s generosity and kindness – as well as the fact he was _very_ into him in that leather jacket – he reached forward and cupped his cheek again, feeling strong cheekbones as he kissed him rather more tenderly, their lips brushing together until time seemed to slow down to a halt and some bizarre part of Remus actually wanted to _dance_ and sing about this.

“You’re a good kisser,” Sirius grinned a bit, apparently very much inclined to stay close to him even when they stopped, “I don’t wanna be patronising or whatever, but if you’ve only been with one guy before and you know-“ He trailed off, looking slightly awkward, but Remus laughed (it was easy to) and kissed him quickly on the cheek.

“You’re not too bad yourself, given you made out that you were never with anyone long enough for them to tell you how to do it.”

Sirius let out a huff of laughter and buried his face in Remus’s neck, inhaling gently. He didn’t know _what_ he smelt like – all his things probably smelt the same as Sirius’s, but the intimacy was wonderful. One hand moved to cup the back of his head now, his fingers lightly running through the silky hair as he guided the man to sit – just sit – on his bed.

“What made you realise?” Remus asked quietly. He still didn’t understand, really – he wasn’t attractive or good at magic, nor was he funny and charming enough to get by without those things, but he could see from the way Sirius looked at him that this was not just some lie. It was genuine.

This time, it was Sirius’s turn to run a hand through Remus’s hair, though it was a little more experimental. "Lots of things.” He admitted, “at first, I admired you. I admired that someone who had been through all that shit and never gave into it. Because I’d struggled so much that I had to escape and you’d just… When you couldn’t you still held out.”

Remus was starting to feel as though he should not have asked, for his cheeks were quite pink now, but he nodded and smiled a little. He wasn’t proud of some of the things he had done, but he hadn’t ended up entirely like Greyback… Which was something.

“But it was more than that, really. When you ended up here and you- You seemed a bit lost, but you were so delighted to be back in this world and you didn’t want to hurt me, that night you thought you had. You were willing to remove yourself from me in case you had and that _showed_ you didn’t just think about yourself.

“And then,” he grinned, “you started smiling more, and… Well, you got those clean clothes and I started to get to know you and…”

“Yeah?” Remus smiled curiously, casually resting a hand on Sirius’s knee.

But the pureblood was blushing slightly and shaking his head – or perhaps it was just colour in his cheeks from the beer – but either way, he seemed rather less eager to talk than usual.

“I thought I’d be looking after you, Remus,” he admitted, shrugging, “like, in every way. But it was never that. We look after each other, you’ve taught me as much as I’ve taught you. Do you get me?”

He nodded. “I thought you were just gonna say you liked my arse.” The man winked, smirking rather mischievously and watching as a new look crossed Sirius’s face at the sight of his expression, before becoming rather serious again. “But thank you. For looking after me, too. I did need it when I first arrived.”

“You returned the favour when I had that fever,” Sirius shuddered.

Remus nodded, biting his lip just a little. “Honestly, I was worried about you, Sirius. You seemed so ill and the things you seemed to be dreaming about were pretty horrifying.” He frowned. Remus had known Sirius had some dark things in his past, but a lot of their conversations seemed to focus more on his past and he didn’t want to pry, but he wanted Sirius to know he had someone he could confide in too, even if that was really a conversation for another day. “I didn’t like seeing you like that, Sirius.”

The pureblood pulled a face to show he didn’t really like Remus seeing him like that either, but seemed to want to move the conversation tentatively onwards a moment later.

“Are you going to be okay at the full moon? I know we’ve talked about it, but given you know how I feel about you now,” he shrugged, “I’m worried, alright? Last time you were a complete and utter mess.”

Remus thought about those things for a moment – how it had not even been a month since Sirius had rescued him, how they had become so close so fast and now he had kissed him, yet they had not even experienced a full moon together yet. It felt like so much longer, but he supposed that was the way these things were – when he was with Ezra, things had also felt as though they were moving so much faster than those long, cold years with Greyback.

“I’ll be okay,” he promised, “I won’t be pretty, but I’ll live and recover and I won’t be that bad,” he offered him a small, encouraging smile though the feeling didn’t really reach his insides. The full moon was only a couple of days from now and he was already feeling the effects of it upon himself. By tomorrow morning, he knew he would be struggling to get out of bed and face an entire day, but that was tomorrow’s problem…

Sirius seemed more reassured by this, though, and gave the half-blood a small smile and a squeeze on the arm. “Alright, but it’s okay if it’s not. If you wanna moan about it and stuff, I won’t mind. I can’t say I know how it feels, but I doubt it’s fun.”

He’d not had _that_ offer in a long time – nobody ever talked about how much it hurt, not even Ezra. His parents had, but he had felt so bad about worrying them and so tired going through it as a child that he had scarcely mentioned it for how bad it was.

“Sirius,” he said slowly, turning to face the pureblood a little better now, “I- You know what you could be getting yourself in for here, right?” Remus whispered, “kissing a werewolf. If people knew, they’d say horrible things… I- I know you feel this way, I believe you. But if you want to back out of any kind of commitment or promises now, that would be okay with me.”

It wouldn’t be okay with him, not really, but he had to say it was so Sirius didn’t suddenly see him closer to the full moon and realise he’d made a terrible, disgusting mistake. It was a way to protect himself, if anything, to make sure that neither of them suddenly wanted out of this when they were too far in.

But Sirius’s expression was calm and he was smiling at Remus, shaking his head in an effort to reassure the man that this was _exactly_ what he wanted.

“I think you’ve forgotten that I was kicked out of my own house for how much I rejected my parents’ ridiculous line on these things, Remus. Perhaps you get a little rough around the edges once a month, but that’s fine with me. I want to do this.”

Warmth rushed into Remus’s chest and he nodded – right now, they hadn’t really established what _this_ was, but that was wonderful to hear. Perhaps in time, he would start to worry about this a little more – but right now, they could bask in the delight of finding out how they felt about each other.

He ducked his head into the crook of Sirius’s neck and smiled – because finally, this whole world was really starting to feel like home.

 


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh, you thought it would be happy from now on? oh boy, you have some big shocks coming 
> 
> (thank you SO much to all the people who've given Kudos and left comments. things have been kind of difficult for me lately and this fic is what I throw myself into because it helps. Hearing that people are enjoying it brings me so much joy too <3

Sirius awoke the morning after his birthday party to find he was still wearing the t-shirt he had worn last night and that he was lying on top of the covers. But it wasn’t that which caught his attention. Rather, it was the surge of happiness coupled with the sunlight streaming through his open curtains, the kind where you knew something good had happened but couldn’t work it out straight away.

Slowly, though, he came to, noticing the sheets beside him were slightly rumpled, as though someone had been lying there but then left. The party last night had been a good one, but he’d not had too much to drink – he could remember it. He could remember the dancing, he could remember looking out of the window with Remus and then _finally_ admitting to how he felt about the man… He could still recall every single kiss; they hadn’t been drunk. Just sweet and honest and happy.

Remus must have fallen asleep beside him, or stayed until he had, but there was no sign or sound of him now. Sirius was planning to look for him when he worked up the energy to get up, but he allowed himself a moment to lie in bed, delighted and relaxed with the best birthday present he had ever received.

There were only a few minutes before he found he was hungry, and crawled out of bed in the hope of finding that Remus had already started on breakfast. Sadly, though, the world wasn’t going to give him absolutely _everything._

He supposed it _was_ his turn to cook sometimes, though, and set about avoiding the clearing up they still had to do and making a breakfast for the two of them. Somewhere in his mind, Sirius worried it would be awkward all of a sudden, but this hadn’t been a stupid drunken kiss. They just had to work on things together, surely… Maybe they’d just have to go for dates, keep it simple to start with. He liked the idea of taking Remus out to nice places. Perhaps he was a little nervous about venturing outside, but whenever they did go, nothing awful happened.

With the prospect of a nice breakfast and an invitation to a date in mind, Sirius knocked on Remus’s door, expecting him to be up by now, probably reading in bed, but he was met with a sleepy groan and opened the door to find Remus in bed, curled up under the covers and shivering a little.

Faster than he could possibly have imagined, Sirius’s mood switched from cheery ease to concern and he dropped to sit beside Remus on the end of the bed, frowning.

“What’s wrong? Are you alright? Are you ill?”

Remus took a moment to surface from under the covers and looked back at Sirius with a sigh. Though he felt slightly bad to think it, he _did_ look quite unwell, as though he had not slept much at all. His cheeks were pale and there were bags forming under his eyes, but he still smiled at Sirius when he replied.

“Just the full moon thing, honest,” he told him – but Sirius didn’t like the weakness in his voice, and he assumed Remus was probably also putting in work to hide some of that. “Food smells good…”

“You want it in here?” Sirius asked. He wanted to be doing _more,_ but it was quite difficult to singlehandedly stop someone from turning into a wolf when they had been doing so once a month for almost all of their life. He supposed this was all he _could_ do, bringing him food and plumping up his pillows, but he felt a bit useless.

Remus nodded. “Thanks… I probably won’t eat much after that. I like to keep the wolf from having too much energy. I’m not in danger though, so go out and stuff if you want to.”

Sirius sighed – he didn’t want to leave Remus to suffer, but he didn’t really have a choice. Perhaps it would be better for him to see James, or take a long walk and try to do something useful for the Order. After all, Remus wasn’t a baby… He could cope on his own.

“I don’t know…” He sighed, reaching for his wand and flicking it so that the plate of food soared right onto Remus’s lap with a sense of utter ease, “I guess I could tail Peter for a bit, I’m worried about what he’s doing now. We’re protected, but he could be feeding them information a bit at a time if it helps him, he’s like that. They might be acting on things slowly.”

The other man’s expression was the one to fall this time – he sighed and lowered his fork before even taking a bite. “I was meant to be doing that for you, checking him out in that disguise…”

“Well, you still can, after the full moon.” Sirius said softly. He wanted just as much as Remus did for him to have a place in the order, but he had to take things at the right pace and his illness had simply got in the way for several days, making it a good deal harder. “I just want to find more information if I can.”

“You’ll be alright, won’t you? It’s safe on your own?”

Sirius smiled wryly and nodded – that wasn’t really concerning him at all, it was what Peter might be getting the other Death Eaters to do which really was a bit of a risk. “He’s not very good at magic for someone who learnt it at school for seven years, I’ll be fine.”

This wasn’t what he had wanted, though. He hadn’t wanted to come in here and plan to tail someone for a day when he was _meant_ to be planning a date to have with Remus, if he agreeed. And now, it seemed as though it was a little harder to start that conversation. With about as much tentativeness as Sirius ever had, he leaned forward and kissed Remus on the temple, relieved to see a small smile spreading across the man’s mouth in reaction.

“I’m glad that wasn’t a dream,” he said, voice soft and happy, even if he was feeling ill, “because it certainly feels too good to be true.”

Another time, Sirius might have planned this better – nothing extravagant for asking someone out, but he would have been casual and comfortable, not blurting out the words in the way he did this time when he turned to Remus.

“Can I take you on a date sometime, then? This kissing is great and stuff, but I want to take you somewhere nice.”

The smile spread to Remus’s eyes this time – he glanced at his lap rather bashfully and nodded a few moments later.

“Is that what we do? Are we _dating?”_

Sirius had never really (not since school) thought to consider what the relationships he had with people were. Sometimes they were a one-off, others he slept with more than once, but the word dating hadn’t really come into it. For a while, he hadn’t really wanted it to, because they enjoyed themselves and he _had_ friends to hang out with. But now he wanted the affection, the hand-holding, the dates…

His last proper date had been in seventh year. It seemed so long ago now…

And he doubted Remus had dated properly either. Perhaps Ezra and he had found nice places together and been in solitude, but there was never a chance to go somewhere, or to show the world that you were important to each other and do things in front of others.

“If you want to… I just thought it would be nice to have some things separate from… I don’t know, going shopping or just for a walk. I want to go for dinner with you or something.”

“You are aware I have _no_ money to pay for any dates? And I can’t remember the last time I went to a restaurant. I might be a bit of a disaster.”

He leaned back, brushing a hand over Remus’s and shaking his head with a small smile. “You forget that I’m trying to use my evil family’s money to do some good. And if you mess up, I’m loud enough and annoying enough to find a way to get their attention even more,” he winked.

Remus played with his food for a moment, but nodded a short while later. “I’d like that, then. It doesn’t have to be anything too fancy, but something to… Make it more of an occasion that sitting on the sofa and making paper aeroplanes.”

Sirius’s emotions still soared at the thought of the fact he was with a man who would go for dinner with him and would return home _with_ him to make paper aeroplanes. And from the fact Remus had returned to his own bed last night, it was fairly clear Remus still wanted some of his own space in that way, taking it slow (or maybe just slower than Sirius was used to), but he was happy with it being that way.

“Okay, the first night you’re feeling fully better after the full moon, we’ll go out for dinner.” He promised, “somewhere nice, maybe in London. But I’ll make it quiet, not too fancy,” he promised quickly, already realising that he was probably going to benefit from the advice of Lily and James here, who both had a lot more experience with dates.

Remus did not respond, but leaned forward and planted a quick kiss on his lips. Sirius did not mind his morning breath, even if he did notice it – Remus, who had not had a proper toothbrush for years on end, probably was not concerned about morning breath in the slightest – but returned the kiss, patted the bedcovers and shuffled back so the half-blood could stretch his legs a little.

“Will you be in bed all day, do you think?”

He _had_ had thoughts about kissing Remus on the sofa for a while, but life seemed to have a bit of a habit of getting in the way of these things and the thought was likely going to be pushed aside for several days.

“I don’t know,” he sighed slightly, though apparently did not want to let on exactly how he was feeling, “I’m doing a lot less than I did at this time on the camp, but I’m worried about how I’ll react to being on my own…”

He sighed this time, unsure of what to say which would make it better – probably because there _was_ little he could say and nothing that would help Remus, and definitely nothing which would stop him from transforming. Thinking that he would just have to do his best to make it up to Remus in every possible way after the moon had passed, he kissed his temple gently and watched as the man settled himself against the pillows. “I’ll go and get you some books if you run out of things to read. Perhaps something like what we read at school, but a little more interesting?” He offered, “that way you can carry on practising without wearing yourself out.”

The smile which crossed Remus’s face now was fleeting, but genuine – he seemed touched by the offer and nodded rather shyly.

“I’d really appreciate that, if you have the time.”

Sirius nodded – for Remus, he had all the time in the world.

* * *

 

The next couple of days passed in a kind of blur. Though Remus stayed in bed for most of it and didn’t really ask anything of him, Sirius found himself busy finding a place for him to transform – an old, abandoned barn he reinforced with magic – and tried to patch it up a little to make it nicer for the man. There wasn’t much he could do, but a spell put some glowing lights to float in the air, which made it look a little less horrible at least…

And then when he wasn’t doing that, he found himself trying to keep things clean and tidy in the house, and cook (Remus didn’t really want to eat, but that didn’t stop him trying). On the side, Dumbledore had given him paperwork for the Order. He didn’t really feel like doing it – and it didn’t really feel too exciting to be dating Remus when he was curled up in bed all the time, looking progressively tired and iller.

Sirius wanted to spend time with him, too, but he’d noticed the man’s temper becoming shorter, his gaze becoming warier, and had found himself rather tentatively offering him meals each night. Remus never _snapped_ at him, but he seemed to have to put in an awful lot of effort when Sirius asked a stupid question. He did thank him a lot, though, for the food and care and the shelter for when the moon came, but he didn’t seem exactly like the same man either.

So he found it was best to settle in the living room with his paperwork, flicking through it mindlessly in the hope of reaching the bottom of it and finding the Muggle newspaper he had bought, if only to laugh at how still the pictures were.

It was nothing that interesting – just details of when people were on watch duty, things they knew about Death Eaters. Dumbledore had asked him to start compiling at file for Pettigrew, but they really needed Remus to seek him out first.

And as it stood right now, he was going to transform into a wolf in only five or so hours.

Sirius was resisting the urge to knock on his door – he’d not seen the man since yesterday evening, and heard no sign of him, but they didn’t have to leave yet.

What was he feeling? Scared? Tired? Numb? He tried to imagine how it would be, knowing that in a few short hours he would lose his mind and all sense of who he was, only to wake up hours later with memories of all he had done, but had not had any control over. Perhaps Sirius imagined a little _too_ hard, though, for he suddenly found himself shuddering a little and almost sprinting towards Remus’s door. Because if he was going through that, it wasn’t okay for him to be going through it alone.

“Remus?” He knocked, not expecting an answer, but the voice responded almost immediately.

“Yeah?”

He opened the door, worried about what he might see – but there was nothing different, not really. The transformation hadn’t started yet and Remus just looked tired, pale and terrified, huddled in a ball in the corner of his bed, dry-lipped and very much awake, wary.

“How are you doing?” It was a bit of a stupid question, because Remus looked like a mess, but he tried a smile and shrugged.

“I’ll be over soon…”

Sirius _ached –_ it was with great reluctance that he refrained from wrapping himself around Remus completely, instead only offering him a hand – though the man did take it.

“It will, it’ll all be over…” There was barely anything in that, though, because Remus would be back at it in a month. And then another month. And then forever. But they just had to take these things one month at a time. “How soon would you like to leave? You have about four hours before the moon is out…”

A look of alarm crossed his face, but it soon fell flat to a kind of constant exhaustion, the expression of a man running from what he just could not escape. “A couple of hours. It’ll help me adjust, I guess. And set up before it’s too late.”

“What about until then?” He asked, unable to stop himself from reaching to brush the hair from Remus’s forehead. The man flinched; he pulled back, but soon leaned into Sirius’s hovering hand and nudged up against it, almost like a dog – perhaps some part of the wolf was already in there, or maybe it was easier to give into parts of it. He made a mental note to buy some books about werewolves and work out what he could do for the man.

“Could you… Could you read?” He asked quietly, the covers up to his chin so he looked quite shy, “out loud. It can be anything. Just a human voice helps, because if I can understand it…”

Sirius didn’t need to be told twice – he seized the nearest book and opened it to where the man’s bookmark was, starting to read.

It felt like so long since that night when Remus had tried to leave, claiming he didn’t deserve to live here, when Sirius had told Remus to read to him until his voice was slightly sore and the sun had risen. This time, though, they were waiting for the sun to set and Remus’s voice was already so hoarse that Sirius had to read, his tongue rolling over the words as the other man’s eyes slid shut.

Two and a half hours seemed to pass in no time, but also so much time, as these things often did when one was dreading something coming. Remus seemed not to have noticed the time passing, though, for when Sirius looked at the clock and – with a heavy heart – told him it was time, he seemed to tip his head up and swallow rather roughly.

“Sorry…” He smiled weakly as Sirius helped him out of bed. There was no point in him changing his clothes, not when he would apparently have to take them off before transforming. “I’m just scared, it’s the first time on my own in a while.”

“I’m sorry you’re alone,” Sirius shook his head, passing Remus a pair of boots to pull on for the short walk to the barn from where they had apparated. “I know it’s better for you to be out of there, but I would be with you if I could. Can werewolves be around _anything_ but other werewolves?”

He was met with both a shrug and an answer. “Werewolves don’t attack other animals,” he said hoarsely, as Sirius helped him into a coat until he looked slightly odd, coat and boots on over his soft pyjamas, “but I can’t just lock one in with me all night, that’s not fair.”

He had a point, Sirius knew, but it set his mind racing. He couldn’t be there with Remus, but animals could… Human to animal transfiguration was not too difficult for him to do, but it wouldn’t be able to last for that long…

He knew he wouldn’t be sleeping well that night. The worry and the darkness would give him a chance to think these things over, because he was willing to do quite a lot if it meant Remus suffered even a little less.

“Yeah, yeah. Are you ready to apparate?” He asked, offering Remus his arm. This was _supposed_ to be something he was doing on a date with Remus, but life had a habit of being pretty terrible to him and would continue to do so.

That spurred him on if anything, though. He _would_ find something to do about this, about all of it, and Remus would suffer a little less as a result.

Trying to keep things quick, he apparated as soon as the half-blood nodded, the world spinning before them until walls became trees and the ground was cold and earthy. It felt wrong to him, but Remus seemed to take it in his stride – as much as was possible – inhaling the country air deeply as he leaned against Sirius for support.

The barn wasn’t far, but it was even more miserable than Sirius had remembered – dark beams and boarded-up windows couldn’t be covered up by the small glowing orbs in the corner, which looked rather pathetic as they hovered over the folded up pile of blankets.

“Is this okay?”

He nodded. “Is it safe?”

Sirius smiled a little – he’d spent several hours putting spells on this room and had got Dumbledore check it for him. It was definitely safe enough, but that only made it more like a prison. Remus seemed to mind less, though – he stumbled towards the piles of blanket in the corner and settled down on them, looking even smaller now he was huddled up there.

“I’ll stay?” Sirius offered, crouching down beside him. “I’ll stay until you tell me to.”

But there was already a strange look in Remus’s eye, a look which said he was giving in to something, a look which said he was exhausted and allowing parts of the wolf to overcome him now. And that was scary, because Sirius knew he was fighting it in every way possible.

“You should go.”

Remus’s lips barely moved, but there was enough sound and the pureblood knew enough so as not to want to push the matter further. Gentle as he could be, he cupped the man’s face in his hands and kissed him deeply, lips far too soft against Remus’s dry ones, ears close enough to hear his gentle sigh, and mind begging for this not to be the last time he kissed him.

“I’ll see you in the morning, okay?”

He nodded once. Sirius gave his hand a long squeeze and got up silently. There wasn’t really anything to say to this. His return home promised a hot meal and the comfort of a bed, whilst Remus would be ripping himself apart in here, alone and scared and hurting both as a human and a wolf.

The door shut behind him and he locked it with his wand, hands trembling a little at the thought of what was to come for the rest of that night. What would happen and what, if this was as bad as the last full moon, _could_ happen to Remus.

It was only once he had settled down at home that the moon rose and somewhere, far off into the distance night in a derelict barn in a lonely field, that the wolf tipped its head back to the sky and howled out loudly, the sorrowful, lonely sounds of a beast who had once been a man.

With Sirius gone, the only thing separating Remus from the wolf was time. And time was a tricky mistress, who trickled at times and poured at others. Right now, all he wanted was for it all to be over, to be waking up. But there was an awful lot to get through before that.

He sat, huddled, in the little corner of blankets Sirius had made for him, something he would be able to vocalise his appreciation for in a couple of days from now. In ways, he was far less of a threat now, locked away in a room where he could not get near innocent people and bite them. Though he wanted that more than anything in the world, it came with a price, the price of knowing he would take out all that aggression on himself instead.

Though he was shivering, he started to undress.

If someone had asked him now, Remus would not have been able to tell them how many minutes it was until the full moon. But he knew exactly how long it would feel from now – the moon was starting to rise, his skin and bones felt weak from fighting, but they were not going to give in yet. Unlike Greyback, he would be fighting this until the very last minute, until his mind was taken over and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it…

In the light of the glowing orbs, his skin looked oddly pale and the scars strangely red. They were still new, really, products of an altercation which had happened under a month ago. But he wished they would fade faster, because there would be new ones before he knew, ones Sirius would surely see.

Somewhere outside, a bird was singing, a melody which would have been far sweeter if he did not know it as the cry which signalled evening and the coming of darkness. Slowly, but reliably, time moved onwards, the earth turning and the moon getting closer.

Now he was aching – his joints were sore and muscles weak, as though he was feverish. A fever would have been a dream right now though, compared to this. It was getting closer and closer and was going to start…

Now.

And when it did start, he was never prepared, never enough for the pain which came.

Hair was sprouting for his body – thick and dark and long as the skin stretched as though making room for it. It was reshaping, slowly, but not without a cause. Underneath, the man’s bones were creaking; some breaking, some growing, others cutting into one another, breaking through nerves without mercy.

And Remus would have screamed, but his throat was closing up – stretching and twisting in his neck as though it was writhing to be free. His vocal cords pulled and tightened. Making sound was agony, but that did not stop the guttural, desperate cries for help which left his mouth on occasion.

There was cause to, though – for whilst his face became longer and the skin stretched, his organs were doing battle. Shrinking, too small for his human body, his heart failed to provide him with what he needed. His lungs became crushed as they moved around in the process, until panic was rising in his veins – but the blood was boiling in them and there was nothing to do but wait.

By this point, the light in the room was meaningless – he had closed his eyes, fearing the rods and cones shifting as his eyes bulged in their sockets and seemed almost to fall out. Colours disappeared rapidly, until a black-and-white blur was all he had.

But this was nothing, nothing compared to the worst part of it. It wasn’t what he was truly fighting after all. This, the pain, the absolute agony of his spine twisting into a new shape around an unprepared body, would have been bearable had he not been losing the most important part of himself. The first hairs had sprouted from a human head with a human mind – one which worried and loved and wished not too hurt people too much. And as it happened, he tried to hold onto it now more than ever – to think of Sirius and his family and new friends, to remind himself what that _felt_ like.

Yet feelings were cascading out of him like a viscous waterfall and he was falling, losing all sense of hope and love and happiness. Things changed. They became more primal, more simple. Every subtley, ever nuance of emotion he felt until this point had disappeared in the flicker of a light and was replaced with something primal. Only _need –_ a need to mate and eat and _kill._

And once that was in, Remus was gone.

The wolf stood on all fours, jaw back, ears pricked as it stared up in the direction of the moon, its new lungs taking in their first breath and howling into the darkness.

For now, the wolf had won.

* * *

 

For Sirius Black, this had probably been the longest night of his life. Remus had told him to sleep – he had even thought, naively, that he _would_ sleep. But every creak of the house, every slamming car door and fox in the distance reminded him that Remus would be deep in a part of himself he hated, trying to tear that self apart, trying to break free and hurt others, too.

Was he scared of him? No.

But he was scared _for_ him, and he was scared _about_ him, because if he was too vicious, Sirius might be going back to something terrible in the morning.

Remus had told him not to arrive straight away, but to come soon, to bring blankets and not to expect him to look all too great.

The clock seemed to _stop_ every time he looked at it – by morning, there was stubble on his chin and a redness to his eyes which he had not seen for a while now. He could barely even recall what he had been _doing._ He’d moved into his bed at some point, but did not feel as though he had gained even a wink of sleep.

Unsteady as he apparated, it took the pureblood a moment to come to as he stood before the barn and swayed slightly on the spot. Relief rushed to him; it was still intact, with no sign of a break-out – which meant Remus was in there and he had not harmed anyone else. But he highly doubted it had been pleasant.

Not giving himself time to work himself up to it (that would be a waste), he tapped the door with his wand until it creaked open.

It the morning light it looked brighter, but dusty. And- His stomach twisted. The walls and floor had taken a beating. Still intact, but damaged beyond what he could have imagined – browning blood was spattered through the room and in the corner, lying among the blankets which were now threads, was Remus, naked and apparently unconscious, yet bleeding rather profusely into the nest of blankets he seemed to have made for himself.

“Remus?! _Fuck.”_

He ran closer, terrified that this was the _worst –_ but close to, Remus was breathing and trying to stay awake, though feebly. The blood was still drained from his face, now seeping out of new scars and bites, savage. More so, he thought, because they were self-inflicted.

Remus did not respond (he didn’t expect him to), but groaned weakly, if only to show he was with Sirius as the man bent down, a hand in his hair, calming him even though it was shaking with anxiety.

“You’re o-okay, Remus. I’ve got you. It’s over now… It’s over…”

It was all he could think as he laid a blanket over Remus’s lower half to keep his dignity and started pouring potions and creams onto the wounds on his torso. Their placement was different now, which confused him until he remembered the wolf could only reach specific parts of itself, scratching and biting some areas intensely whilst others seemed only to have been harmed by splinters from the wood and blood smeared over them.

“I’ve got you. You’ll be okay. Look, you’re like this, but you’ve not hurt anybody, you can do this on your own, you’ve proved it.”

Though it seemed to cause him a great amount of difficulty, Remus managed a tiny, weak smile as his eyes fluttered open. Sirius wasn’t sure what he had expected, but he was startled to see how _human_ they were. A little red, yes, but mainly a dark brown, wide and tired and very, very human.

“We’ll get you home. Get you into bed. I’ll just patch you up a bit first and make sure you’re safe to apparate…”

In his ribcage, Sirius’s heart was beating so hard he thought it might explode – this was fear, seeing Remus like this, weak, exhausted. He seemed defeated, which wasn’t right, because he had won. But right now, his lids were sliding shut again and consciousness seemed to be drifting away from him to sleep, where it was probably the best place for him.

He had to bite down roughly on his own lip so as not to cry out when he saw the full damage on his body, the blanket falling from his hand. It wasn’t just this, deep scars and bloody bite marks; it was this _every month,_ month after month after month until he died. Only then did it occur to Sirius that this would probably be what killed Remus, when his body could not take the transformation any longer. As he applied potions to the limp body, he tried to push the thought away, but it persisted. Would he die during a transformation? Would he be human? Would he spend every full moon in older age wondering if it was his last?

They had not talked about the future yet – not friends, especially not as a couple. But Sirius had not been able _not_ to think about it and it had fostered a sense of something in him. If he stayed with Remus, this would be _their_ future – healing him every month, wondering if each time he said goodbye to him would be the last.

He had to _do_ something, something more than applying potions through teary eyes on a bright, spiteful morning. Something more than wrapping Remus up in blankets and apparating with him in his arms. Something more than carrying him into the bed, wishing he had not chosen a red colour scheme for the room he did not even know Remus would be having when he decorated it…

There had to be _something._

He’d talk to someone about it. James. Lily. McGonagall… Surely they didn’t want Remus to suffer more than he had to. _They_ were all clever. _They_ could help.

For now, he had to settle for charming a pair of pyjamas onto the man’s body once it was bandaged up, tucking him under the covers and refusing to leave him. Right now, he at least looked calmer, no longer fearful – perhaps even relieved that it was over. Before it had all happened, Remus had promised that once the pain was sorted, this sleep would be long and restorative. He’d wake up a long time later and would be on track again. But Sirius wasn’t going to let that to convince him to leave. He wasn’t even going to get off the bed, instead shifting to the man’s side to run a hand through his matted hair.

To think it had been fur only a few hours ago – to think the teeth had been sharp and ready to kill. And now it was all gone. Greyback, a different man, lived somewhere between those lines most of the time. But Remus was young, exhausted and human. He leaned down, pressing his lips to his forehead in a kiss which elicited only the tiniest sigh of breath from the man, and a little more burrowing under the covers. That was okay, though. He was alive. He was _safe._

Remus barely moved at the touch, but it was probably a good sign. Sirius knew he was just in for the waiting game now, which was long and tiring but hopefully likely to be a lot less terrifying than what they had each just been through.

Deep down, he knew Remus would be okay, at least for this month. But it hurt. It hurt them both. And it was only going to hurt even more as they got more invested in this relationship.

But it was worth it.

* * *

 

Much to their mutual relief, Remus’s recovery was worrying at times, but it certainly went in the right direction. Twenty-four hours later, he was awake and well enough to shuffle into the kitchen with a blanket around himself to make some toast. The next morning, he had joined Sirius for breakfast. Though his movements were a little slower than usual, he seemed cheerful and… Well. With every meal, the colour returned more to his cheeks and _he_ certainly seemed positive about how it had been compared to expectation.

And now, he seemed almost better entirely, curled up on the sofa with a book and a smile as Sirius sifted through some Order documents quite mindlessly, much preferring to watch Remus out of the corner of his eye. His hair was falling over his face and the Autumn sun was shining through the window onto it, bringing out the gold- And Sirius _ached_ for something, but he wasn’t sure what.

“Everything okay?”

Remus had looked up from his book and was smiling rather curiously, apparently having noticed his boyfriend staring. Sirius might have felt awkward about this in the past, but right now, he wanted Remus to know _exactly_ why he was staring.

“Yeah- God, yeah. You look fantastic.”

The half-blood let out a laugh as warm as the sunshine on his face, lying back on the sofa and stretching a little. The bandage on his wrist was still a tell-tale sign of what had happened to him, but he didn’t seem to be in any pain currently.

His little smile and shake of his head made Sirius positively _swell_ with delight.

“What do you want from me? Are you asking me to cook for you tonight?” His face fell a second later, becoming more serious, “honestly, I’m more than happy to. You’ve done so much for me over the past couple of days.”

Whilst the thought of Remus’s cooking _was_ tempting, it instilled an even better idea in Sirius, who straightened up so excitedly that he knocked most of the papers he was working with onto the floor.

“No! But you know what we _could_ do. We could go on that date, I could take you for dinner.”

There was a look of fleeting surprise – or even alarm – on Remus’s face, but only seconds later it was replaced with delight and a quick nod.

“I’d like that… I’d like that a lot, actually,” he said softly, “I think I’m well enough to. Is it okay that it’s such short notice for you? Have you got enough time to do your hair?”

Sirius couldn’t complain at the comment, because it was only true, so he simply laughed. Though, he liked Remus _almost_ enough not to worry about how his hair looked. Except it was their first date. So he did.

“Is this your first ever date at a _place?”_ He asked curiously, concerned not to come across as condescending, because he’d not had a date for a very long time himself, and Remus was definitely going to enjoy himself.

Remus nodded. “First time in a restaurant for a long time, too. Guess I’m not going to be able to order from the children’s menu this time…” He laughed, leaning back.

Sirius would have bought him the entire restaurant had he asked, but his appetite would probably have settled for something off the children’s menu anyway.

“You can have anything you like, Re. You can have wine. I have to use the Black family fortune in some way, I’d much rather spend it on my gorgeous boyfriend than on… Decapitated elf heads.”

On the sofa, his boyfriend blushed – which was probably the first time Sirius had seen someone blush in a conversation about elf heads, so it was something of an achievement. It was true, though – what he’d inherited, he wanted to put to good use, and that included treating his boyfriend to absolutely anything and everything he wanted.

“I’m glad I come before elf heads in your life, Sirius. That really means something to me.” He was smirking, that kind of cockiness which made Sirius feel weak at the knees rather too easily, “I’ve been vying for that position my whole life, actually.”

Laughing, he threw a piece of paper at the man, who caught it with a menacing smile and hid it in his pocket, refusing to give it back to Sirius. “You prioritise me over elf heads _and_ random pieces of paper. How kind…”

Sirius was sure he was blushing too now, because Remus’s teasing, however light and silly, always made his stomach feel mushy.

“Go on,” his boyfriend smiled, gesturing with one hand, “go and get changed, Sirius. I know how long you take getting ready, and I probably can’t go to bed too late.”

Sirius practically skipped into his bedroom, grinning stupidly. He was taking _Remus_ to a restaurant. And though the man was probably terrified about messing up somehow, he knew he would fit right in. Perfectly. The universe owed them at least one good evening, surely?

Sirius emerged to find Remus already ready to go – which wasn’t a surprise, really, given it had taken him a _long_ time to find his best jeans and a shirt and to fix his hair. But Remus, annoyingly, seemed to look just as good without the effort. In his shirt and trousers, he looked rather _effortless,_ handsome without knowing it too much, relaxed and easy. If anyone was told he had been a savage beast only two days earlier, they would not have believed him in the slightest. He had even rolled his sleeves up slightly, not too afraid to show the bandage on his arm as it looked like it was from a normal injury. For just a moment, Sirius felt rather dizzy, as though he had finally met some competition.

“You ready?” Remus glanced him over and smiled widely, “you look great.”

Sirius reached for his hand and held it tightly. Perhaps to start with when Remus had moved in, he had felt like Sirius’s creation – _Sirius_ had cut his hair and bought him clothes, healed him and given him things to clean his teeth. But now Remus was thriving and it was impressive, even if he didn’t recognise it.

“So do you. I’ve picked a place, if you fancy Italian.”

That was another thing; Remus definitely wasn’t picky in his taste (though he seemed to dislike olives and always picked them off pizza to give to Sirius). “I always fancy Italian. Anything that’s not your cooking, really.”

The evening was still glowing as they made their entrance, no longer holding hands (it was bound to attract some looks and Remus tried to deflect those as much as physically possible), but still finding intimacy in the way they walked in step, in how Remus would stop close to him when Sirius pointed out something interesting.

And conversation flowed easily, too. The moment they were seated in the restaurant, Sirius wondered why they hadn’t done this earlier – it was _easy_ and glorious, sitting in a quiet corner and grinning at one another over the menus as Remus struggled slightly with the Italian words.

“Okay, Remus, I have something to tell you… You remember that bookshop we went in? That Muggle one with the wizarding bit out the back?”

Remus nodded slowly, looking up from the menu with a wary expression. “I do, yeah… What’s fet- fettu-?”

“Pasta, long pasta, like ribbons or something. You’d probably like it. And… Yeah… When you were ill  the other day,” he said delicately – they were unlikely to be overheard here, but he still had to be careful, “I went into that bookshop and spoke to the man and we got onto the topic of you.”

He was sure he heard the soft sigh leave Remus’s mouth, but his expression was only of mild interest and encouragement for him to continue.

“Well, people in the Order don’t have to work, you know you don’t have to. But he’s willing to give you a job, if you want. And I promise I didn’t ask outright. You just came up, and he said he liked you and knew you were from a good family, so…”

Sirius trailed off, preferring to catch the look on Remus’s face and read it, now suddenly terrified he had ruined their date, but Remus was smiling, if rather shyly.

“You think I’d be up for that? Working in a shop and stuff?”

“ _He_ thinks you’d be up for it, Re. Honestly, you’re fitting in. You can have a job and stuff if you want to,” he smiled, relieved – because he hadn’t reached the other bit yet. “So… The interview is on Thursday, if you want it.”

The half-blood shut his menu so abruptly that it nearly fell on the floor, eyes wide. Sirius felt a _little_ bad for going quite this far without asking, but he wanted Remus to know he was good enough for this. And Remus, who often commented on the fact that he was on his first toothbrush in _years_ and couldn’t remember the words to any Christmas carols, might not realise it himself.

“God,” he laughed softly, tipping his head back with a roll of his eyes that Sirius took to mean this was mainly good, but he probably shouldn’t keep being this way forever, “you don’t stop, do you, Sirius? You keep giving me things? When am I gonna give back? Thank you…”

“Well,” he leaned forward, grinning, “you could buy me things with your wages. But you really don’t have to, I have enough and apparently I’m spoilt enough.”

“Wages…”

“Of course you’ll get wages, Re. You weren’t expecting parsnips or something, were you?”

“I don’t exactly have a bank account,” he smiled, “or know how to open one. And if I didn’t owe you quite so much, I’d happily work for _free._ ”

Sirius shook his head firmly, hair flying until it messed up a little and he found himself whining, rather annoyed. “You don’t owe me, Remus. You don’t have to give me anything.”

“Oh, I can think of plenty of things I _am_ planning on giving you…”

Sirius’s cheeks turned an interesting shade of maroon at _that,_ but he failed to find an answer before the waiter arrived and he found himself ordering a lot of garlic bread for them to share whilst Remus managed to pronounce fettuccini pretty well.

“So, _I_ was thinking,” Remus said softly once the man had left, leaning forward until part of his face was obscured by the flickering candle between them, “you’ve taught me so much. And I left a place I really didn’t want to be in, but I did learn some stuff here, and it would be good to teach you things as well, if you want to know. Maybe it was part of the act, but you didn’t seem too keen about roughing it on your mission.”

Sirius had _hated_ roughing it. He’d been in a decent tent and missed showers and fresh food.

“Mm, that’s a… Fair assessment.”

“I’d like to take you to sleep under the stars someday. You’ll appreciate it, I promise.” He smiled, eyes crinkling in the corners.

With that, the restaurant and the flirting all suddenly seemed so _fake_ compared to Remus’s offer; stargazing, something real, something which didn’t need to be fancy. Something he never would have done, not like this, until now.

“I’d… I’d really like that,” he said softly, “We did Astronomy lessons at school, but it’s not the same.”

“It’s really not,” Remus smiled, “I used to make stories out of the stars.”

Sirius sighed into his hand. Not because Remus’s life was idyllic – rather, it was the opposite of that, he’d had a terrible life. But it was the fact he had made something so _good_ out of things which were utterly terrible, and still managed to make a life for himself. It was _that_ he envied, the sense of resilience Remus had, that he didn’t even realise he had.

“Sirius is a star,” the half-blood said vaguely, taking a sip of the water on his table. Sirius had ordered them wine, but he seemed to be savouring it after seeing the price on the menu. “I’m sure I could write you into one of those stories…”

Not worried about the price of the wine in the slightest, Sirius took a long drink from his cup, as though encouraging his boyfriend to do the same. “You clearly don’t know my ego if you’re considering writing me into stories,” he laughed, “it’s a dangerous game. But yeah, I’d actually really like that.”

He supposed reading and stories had stayed with Remus all this time, if he had lost all his books but still made attempts to keep a part of that world when he was with Greyback.

As though he had read his mind, the werewolf looked up at him with a half-smile. “I imagine you still have so many questions about my life. I do about yours…”

Sirius nodded, but felt a little bad – Remus talking about his childhood wasn’t going to be a happy conversation and nor, if they talked about his life with his parents, was his. “Yeah, but it’s a date… You don’t have to…”

“We should get to know each other,” he told him sagely, leaning back and thanking the waiter with a smile as a dish of pasta was placed before him, “that’s what dates are for. I don’t mind if you have questions.”

Picking an olive off his pizza and nibbling it, Sirius thought. He would still keep it light, because there were things he was curious about which he wasn’t sure he could really _ever_ ask Remus, but it was nice to get to know each other. “Alright…” He said slowly, cutting into it, “stupid one, but weren’t you cold living outside in winter?”

Remus laughed, which was a pretty good sign, really, and twirled the pasta around his fork with some difficulty. “Yeah, but probably not as bad as you’d expect. We’d spend winter in south, in caves, and we could all light fires from a pretty young age, so you’d just have to keep close to them. Besides, we’re are actually warmer than most people,” he lowered his voice, speaking very, very quietly, even though the could not be heard over the sound of the piano being played in the corner. “I just feel cold pretty much all the time, I think that’s just me, though.”

Chuckling, Sirius reached across the table and gave his hand a quick squeeze – a very simple gesture, but one which made them man’s eyes crinkle into a smile. It was about the best they could manage without being asked lots of questions, which was sad, but something they were both prepared to do.

“That night at my party, did you fall asleep in my bed?” He asked curiously. He had been with Remus before going to sleep, but seemed to remember waking up on his own. It hadn’t mattered, but he was still fairly curious.

The man looked rather sheepish, nodding. “I drifted off next to you,” he admitted, “you fell asleep first and I was just playing with your hair. Next thing I knew, I was waking up in the middle of the night and was right next to you and… Didn’t want to give the wrong impression or make things weird.”

Sirius nudged his foot with his slightly smaller one. “You won’t make things weird. But that’s sweet… Why did you wake?”

“Oh, the usual,” Remus sighed. It was an off-hand response, but it somehow made Sirius notice the bags under his eyes – they were a lot better now the full moon had passed, but he still remained under the impression that he wasn’t sleeping as much as he should have been.

“Still?” He sighed. It wasn’t like he’d solved his own nightmares yet, but the idea of Remus having them bothered him rather more. “What kind of- Is it about stuff that’s already happened to you?”

“Mm, more or less.” He stopped eating for a second, putting his cutlery down to take a sip of his wine for once. Sirius noticed a drop of it remain on his lips and wished he could kiss him now, where it would taste like smoke and red wine. “It’s better than actually being there, so…”

_That_ was something Sirius could definitely understand – however horrible they were, there was safety in waking up knowing that you were away from that situation. It never fully left you, not really, but he worked on the kind of ragged weariness that he’d have to be _very_ unlucky to end up there again.

And so, they ate. Ate and talked in the knowledge that things would probably not get much worse, not realising how young there were, or how naïve even they could be.

Because Fenrir Greyback, for all the pain he caused, was not like a storm one could simply wait for it to pass. And he had unfinished business with Remus Lupin.

* * *

 

The night at the Italian restaurant had, quite honestly, been one of the best of Remus’s life. They had eaten until they were stuffed and then some, because Sirius insisted on buying him chocolate ice cream to round things up and it had been too good not to eat. And then they had walked the long way home, ambling because Remus felt safer with fewer people around and because the night seemed to calm Sirius. Arm in arm, they had stopped by the river, and again by tall townhouses with shapes moving behind closed curtains, illuminated by soft glows. Though the city was large and overwhelming, there was something about it Remus liked – when they returned to the flat, they had seemed tucked into their own little niche, cosy and safe. Sirius had pointed out that in a place this big, it was easy to go unnoticed, and though he seemed a little dismayed by that fact, Remus really rather liked it. He was one of the ants you could look down upon from a tall window and think very little about. Besides, people were self-centered – the little ants were nothing compared to the watcher, most of the time. They were small. Harmless.

Once home, Sirius had poured them each another glass of wine, but both had stood untouched on the floor by the sofa. Instead, Remus had finally received what he had been craving all evening as Sirius sat in his lap and made him taste the olives he had avoided. The lights of the city had glinted at them through the window when they pulled apart for air and this time, Remus hadn’t even felt scared. Maybe this was going, maybe it was gone… Having Sirius beside him and the night air on his face made him feel somehow invincible, in ways he couldn’t describe. It wasn’t confidence so much as hope, hope that it would always feel this way.

And, if he could read Sirius as well as he thought he could, then the man felt the same too.

By the end of it, Remus’s shirt was rumpled and Sirius’s in need of ironing, but they went to their separate beds with rather dazed grins, holding back not because they had to, but because they wanted to. Because Remus wanted to go slowly, when things were so new.

Remus had fallen back onto the bed as though it was a cloud, arms wrapped around himself as he stared at the ceiling and his heart seemed to flutter. Sirius wanted him. Sirius _wanted_ him and it was reciprocated. The window no longer terrified him and finally, things were starting to piece together.

For twelve hours, he was allowed that feeling. For twelve glorious, golden hours, Remus felt as though the universe had given him something.

But the universe had not finished with him yet, as became clear when he dropped himself onto a seat at the dining table with a bowl of cereal the next morning, moving Sirius’s papers to make room to eat.

The man himself was wandering in and out of the bathroom with a towel around his waist, humming loudly, but never annoyingly. They had kissed each other good morning; Remus’s heart had _sung._

“This is a mess!”

He pushed cornflakes into his mouth, though he really only had room for a small bowl after last night.

“What is?”

“Your papers! There’s Order stuff everywhere, a newspaper…”

“You can read them, it’s fine.”

Sirius called out from the bathroom with a toothbrush in his mouth. He liked to clean them _before_ breakfast, which Remus didn’t really understand, but he didn’t exactly have a long history with toothbrushes.

He pulled the nearest thing close – if only to get some more reading practice in. It was a Muggle newspaper, nothing interesting. Except for the story on page eight…

_Bangor Break-In Sparks Local Confusion_

_A break-in at a grocery shop in Bangor, Wales has sparked confusion amongst locals when several men broke into the shop and threatened great violence upon the owner, whilst only taking coins from the till and products._

_Helen Bennett, the wife of the shop’s owner, claimed how the men who entered the shop and intimidated staff there._

_“They were huge and horrible,” Mrs Bennett told our reporter, “big men with big teeth, but no weapons at all. They held our grocery boy like a hostage but did not seem to have any weapons, but leered over him._

_“Whilst they the staff under their control, other members of the group took various items from the shop and large amounts of money from the till, but only in coins.”_

_Nobody was harmed in the incident, but the staff and customers were rather shaken by the presence of these men, even if they did not try to take more than a low value of items and only coins from the till._

_Police are searching for several suspects, all described as unkempt, over six foot tall and wearing ragged clothing. Eyewitnesses have described them as being dirty, with matted hair and unclean teeth. Whilst the police were not able to gain any traces of the men in the shop, one photo remains from security footage showing one of the suspects._

_If you have any information, please call-_

Remus stared down at the photo and felt his stomach drop several inches down his body. Staring back, through the grainy photo from the security footage, was a photo he knew all too well.

He did not notice the spoon clatter from his hand and onto the table, but Sirius walked over with a frown, staring at the article, confused, because Remus’s hands were trembling slightly.

“What is it?” He peered at the photograph, squinting, “who is it?”

“I- He was on the camp.” Remus muttered, “one of Greyback’s men.”

One of his inner circle, the centre of the inner circle, even. He had pushed Remus around when he was younger, had mocked him countless time.

Sirius didn’t seem to make the connection immediately, squeezing Remus’s shoulder with the reassurance of a man who knew it was horrible to see a face from the past like that, but didn’t really understand the impact of it.

“They’re targeting Muggles.” Remus said softly, because he didn’t want to wait. “They’ve never done this before, Sirius. _Never.”_

The pureblood shook his head and sighed, but seemed resolutely sure there was nothing which could really be done.

“I’m sorry… This isn’t your fault…”

That wasn’t what Remus was thinking, though, as he ran a finger over the text in the paper and swallowed roughly.  Suddenly, their pursuit of Peter Pettigrew seemed rather futile because of the magnitude of this.

“Where’s Bangor?” He asked eventually, feeling his stomach twist – he had an inkling, one which he wasn’t sure if it was gut instinct or something more animalistic, but it wasn’t _good._ Sirius shrugged, but quickly found a map for Remus and scanned it until he jabbed his hand onto the picture, frowning.

“Thought so. This is near where the Holyhead Harpies are from. You don’t think this was somehow related to that-“

Remus adored Sirius, but right now that stupid Quidditch talk was laughable. Greyback didn’t know anything about Quidditch, and he certainly wasn’t antagonising Muggles to get the attention of the all-female team (according to his claims, he had plenty of ways of getting female attention). No, this was about…

“We need to speak to Mr Dumbledore,” he said quietly, standing up and folding the paper, though he kept it close to his chest. Sirius seemed to waver for a moment, as though wanting to find a way to reassure Remus, but there wasn’t really one – because he knew this man and his games and Greyback, as much as he hated to admit it, was playing _exceptionally._

“I- Sure, okay. Now?”

Remus nodded, already at the fireplace, something which seemed almost to surprise Sirius into joining him, but resting a hand on Remus’s shoulder before they made any attempt at travelling.

“He’ll be at Hogwarts.”

“Then can we go there?” There was a note of urgency in Remus’s voice – they had some time; it was daytime, Greyback operated at night. But they really didn’t have much and he wanted Sirius here, but he _needed_ some help from Dumbledore.

“Sure- I think I can get there from here. Try it,” he urged him. There was a tone to his voice which seemed to want to fuss over Remus, work out what the problem was and solve it, but that would be patronising and this was likely complex.

So Remus stepped into the fireplace, throwing the powder into the air and crying out ‘Hogwarts’, unconcerned by the fact a closed fireplace could result in a rather painful outcome to his attempts.

He was lucky, though, to find himself spinning and spinning before stone walls materialised in front of him, covered in paintings and heavy embroidered tapestries – a strange room, but not an unpleasant one.

Any other time, he would have stopped to think about how it was to be in this room, this building. His father had lived here for seven years, as had Sirius, and this had once been the placed he dreamed about being able to go on long, lonely nights. But that passed him by, for now – all he could focus upon was getting across the room to the figure standing by the desk.

Dumbledore seemed to turn on the spot in slow motion, his expression of surprise almost comical as he took in the soot-covered Remus and the lump which was Sirius appearing in the fire. He spoke with immense calmness, though, offering a plushy seat to Remus, who did not take it.

“Mr Lupin?” He smiled vaguely, “what can I do for you? Is everything okay?”

Struggling a little for words to express how not okay he was, Remus offered over the newspaper, which Dumbledore scanned as Sirius arrived at his shoulder, somehow a little breathless and rather pale.

The elderly man seemed to read this with more understanding than Sirius, perhaps because he knew the patterns of werewolves better and could chase it to Greyback. But he frowned, the crinkles deepening on his old face.

“I thought Greyback was spending winter in the south of England? This suggests… Otherwise.”

“I know,” Remus swallowed roughly, “It suggests-“

Sirius was hanging onto every word, but seemed to come to understanding moments before Remus said it, clapping a hand over his mouth in shock and horror.

“That’s where my family are.” He said quietly. “He _knows._ I know he knows.”

His boyfriend’s hand reached to give his shoulder a tight squeeze, but nothing could relieve the tension Remus felt. Hands in his hair, he felt unsure what to do with himself. “He’s so close, he’s never been there in winter… My grandma- My cousins.”

The thought of Greyback getting close to them made him _sick._ He should never have been there, should never have traced his family without thinking of the danger… Dizzy and horrified, the feeling of a loss of something he had barely gained was unsteadying. With a nudge from Sirius, he was forced to accept the chair offered.

“There’s been no evidence of an attack, Remus,” Dumbledore said kindly, returning the paper to his desk and smoothing it down.

That was only the slightest of reliefs though – Remus’s stomach flipped and he shook his head impatiently. “He’s not just after them- He’s after me. Baiting me. He _will_ attack them if he doesn’t get what he wants.”

“And what does he want?”

“I don’t know. Information. Me back. The truth, money, blood, anything…” Remus’s face contorted with anguish and fear, “to punish me.”

“I can have them moved,” Dumbledore said slowly. “I don’t understand how they know, but I can have them put to safety.”

Remus was reminded of the little cottage with the wellingtons outside and the children’s drawings on the kitchen wall, of knowing what it was like for him and his parents when they were forced to move house every few months. And these people weren’t even a part of it… They didn’t even _know._ Greyback would find them anyway. If he knew their location now, he would surely find a way to trace them if they moved.

“No.”

It was Sirius who spoke up this time, turning to face Remus with confusion bordering on trepidation, as though some part of him knew what was coming but was not willing to admit to it. “You don’t want them put to safety?”

“No. I have to find him and have this out.”

“No!”

“Perhaps…”

Sirius’s cry and Dumbledore’s level tone seemed to reach Remus in unison – the old man was looking grave, but Sirius was staring as though he had gone mad. He’d expected little else, but it wasn’t pleasant to look at.

“You can’t go back! He nearly kill you. He _will_ kill you, Remus.”

“He’ll kill my aunt and uncle and grandma and cousins!” He stared back, able to see the hurt in Sirius’s eyes and truly being able to understand it, but knowing he could not sit on this, not for a minute. “He’s already killed my parents. I _have_ to.”

“Send someone else, then?” Sirius turned to Dumbledore this time, as though demanding the old man himself posed as a werewolf, “you can’t just go back there Remus! You only just escaped.”

“Nobody else can!” Remus raised his voice, “who else can do this job? I have to stop him, Sirius. And you _know_ that I can’t get someone else to do that for me. Leading them to safety won’t work, he’ll just find them again.”

“It doesn’t have to be you,” Sirius stepped closer to him, looking as though he had forgotten Dumbledore was in the room entirely, “anyone can be a spy. They can just go and capture him- They can just- With their wands.”

“I have to go!”

“No!”

Remus’s face crumpled as he thought about what he had been trying to avoid. Greyback had taken his parents, his home, his childhood and innocence, his first love, and was now threatening his remaining family.

“You’re next on that list, Sirius,” he said quietly, “after them, once he realises, you’ll be his next target. There’s no safety, not really. I can’t afford to lose-” A furious breath, a gulp of air – but it failed to steady Remus’s voice as much as he wished. “I’m not trying to be selfish, throw myself into things rashly. But I’m the only one who can stop him- And if we somehow _do_ get my family away, then he’ll turn onto you.”

He didn’t dare meet the pureblood’s face for several painful seconds, but when he did, Sirius’s eyes seemed glassy, but his body had changed. No longer tense, riling himself up, he had changed to a quiet acceptance of those facts, though looked terrified as he turned to Dumbledore, who was staring at both men in silence.

“You have to give him _all_ the protection the Order can give. I mean it. You saw what happened there.”

A little unsettled, Remus shook his head. “I’m not sure… I’m not sure this is an Order thing, Sirius,” he said, lips barely moving, “I think it’s a Greyback thing…”

“Then how does Greyback know about your family?” Sirius asked, looking slightly alarmed. “Only we knew, and Lily.”

“If someone is tracking Lily Evans…” Dumbledore said gravely, “which I have reason to believe.”

Sirius looked as though he wanted to spit on the ground, though refrained. “Pettigrew.”

“Not without an accomplice,” the old man replied, “Pettigrew has not known of Lily Evans’s movements for some time now, we had made sure of that, there must be another… Someone within the Order…”

For Remus, this was dizzying. How Pettigrew and Lily linked in to Greyback targeting his family made _no_ sense whatsoever. Why would Greyback be targeting him? Did Greyback know Pettigrew somehow? For a few moments, the confusion was so great it overtook his fear, but not for long. Sinking into the chair beside him, Sirius seemed to require a similar clarification given their spy was not Pettigrew.

“So…” He said slowly, “Pettigrew has someone else in the Order helping him track Lily’s movements?”

“Yes,” Dumbledore said patiently, now taking his own seat. “Whoever this is has been able to track Miss Evans’s movements and likely followed her and you, Remus, when you were uncovering your remaining family. They have then fed this information to Fenrir Greyback.”

“But _how?”_ Sirius crinkled his brows, about as confused as Remus felt. “How does Pettigrew and this other person know Greyback?”

The elderly headmaster folded his hands and stared at both men for a long moment, sighing softly. “I suppose through Lord Voldemort.”

“ _What?”_ It was Remus’s turn to speak this time – he shouldn’t have been surprised, but he certainly did not see why things regarding him were so important in what was going on. He was a mess to the system and a weak force of resistance who had slipped away with help, little else.

“Oh, yes.” Dumbledore nodded, “I imagine Pettigrew and the other contacted Voldemort with this information upon Greyback’s request. I do not doubt that he is in contact with Voldemort right now… After you left, Sirius, he likely became suspicious and sent out envoys. By now, he has likely discovered he was _never_ in contact with a true Death Eater.”

Under the table, Sirius squeezed Remus’s knee gently.

“Yes,” the half-blood said slowly, chewing his tongue, “but why does Voldemort want to know about me? Why-”

“Greyback wishes to target you, no doubt.” Dumbledore sighed, “after finding out that Sirius was not a Death Eater, he likely realised you were not killed and, I assume, became aware that you were- Fighting for another team.”

“So?”

“So he wants to rid of you, I’m afraid. He wants to put a stop to that.”

“Why chase me, though?” Remus asked – this was what he did not understand. “I’m one man who wriggled out of his grasp, I’m not important.”

A flicker of a smile crossed Dumbledore’s face, but Sirius’s rather mutinous look put a stop to it quickly.

“I have reason to believe, Remus, that many are beginning to rally against Greyback in your spirit. With you gone, they have realised the horrors he commits and have shifted to your own viewpoint.”

He couldn’t understand _that._ After years of loneliness, of fighting almost everyone- And now Dumbledore was saying they had all converted to hating Greyback too? It seemed pretty unlikely… Far too unlikely. Nobody had ever backed him up when he’d tried to stand against him, not even when Ezra has been killed. He knew he was supposed to be happy about it, but it _wasn’t_ fair, because this support could have gotten him and others free years ago. Or maybe had had just been too much of a coward even to realise how other people felt… It was complicated, too complicated.

“I should go sooner rather than later,” Remus said. A huge part of him was reluctant to, fighting against it, but another part knew that he could very easily lose his family and Sirius if he wasn’t careful. “As soon as possible. I know it’s playing into his hands, but we can’t really afford not to right now. I’m sorry.”

Sirius seemed at least to have accepted now that his boyfriend had to do it, but it was clear he was not happy about it – though that emotion seemed to be aimed at Dumbledore rather than himself, which he didn’t really understand.

“I’ll go with you. We’ve planned how we were going to disguise you to see Peter, I’ll just wear the disguise instead. I can pretend you found me or something. I don’t want-”

Remus laid a hand on his arm, shaking his head just once, but it was enough to stop Sirius from talking. “Stay here,” he told him firmly. The thought of Sirius going anywhere near Greyback was physically painful, after what had happened to too many loved ones. “I’ll find a way to contact you. Support me back here. You- At best, you would end up like me, Sirius. Greyback would find a way to make it happen.”

For a moment, resilient stubbornness wavered on Sirius’s face, as though he seemed to be fighting an internal battle – but in the end, he nodded.

“You need to keep an eye on Pettigrew anyway,” Remus nodded, “I’ll be okay. I’ve- Well, I’ve spent years of my life around this man. One short trip won’t kill me.”

In reality, Remus was aware he was in a much greater deal of danger this time. For years, he had survived because Greyback had not realised his loyalties and had thought he could convince Remus to be what he wanted werewolves to be. Even when he had resisted, the man had seemed to see it as a challenge, wanting to force Remus into following his orders. Greyback’s hope for him had helped him to survive. But if the man had contact with the Death Eaters, then he knew Sirius was a fake, a spy. And he would have realised that Remus, who had spent an unusual amount of time around him, had joined his ranks. The last time he had seen the werewolf, he had tried to kill him. From the look on Sirius’s face, he was remembering that too. But there was very little choice in the matter… Under the table, he took Sirius’s hand and squeezed hard.

“I’ll go today. I don’t- I don’t like waiting around, dreading things.”

Was that bad? Was it wrong to want to do it quickly when there was a horrible, slim but still too large chance that this might be the last time he saw Sirius? Remus was afraid to drag it out, afraid it would make it harder. He just had to _do_ this – and do it before he ended up having more people get killed. Besides, he had spent enough time waiting for the full moon, dreading it. The constant state of dread, as though he was hanging on the back of his chair, about to fall, every single moment of the day, exhausted him to his bones. This just had to be done, really.

“How will you contact me?” Sirius asked, a little sharper than usual. Dumbledore seemed to be watching the space between the two of them, weighing things up. He wasn’t sure how much the old man knew, but there was something which made Remus suppose he wasn’t entirely ignorant to what there was between them.

“I… Is there something I could learn with magic? I think an owl would be too obvious.” He bit his lip, feeling useless. He’d be taking his wand – he might need it, and it would be useful if it surprised Greyback (who was potentially expecting him to have one anyway).

“No time, no time…” Sirius sighed, running a hand through his dark hair and standing up, pacing. He seemed to be unable to sit still – Remus, meanwhile, wanted to sit so still that the world enveloped him peacefully. That moss grew over him and branches and leaves entwined him so that no-one noticed and no-one tried to hurt those he loved.

Sadly, his living, breathing flesh prevailed, as did Greyback’s powers. He wasn’t even sure what he was there to _do._ Did he have to kill him? Strike a deal? Pretend he had turned away from his opposition to Voldemort? Some of those things were more practical, others more desirable…

Vague, half-constructed plans filled his mind tauntingly, but nothing came – only the sound of Sirius jumping once in the air, as though he had thought of something.

“The mirror!”

“Sorry?”

“James and I have two-way mirrors. You take mine, I’ll borrow his. You just have to have somewhere big enough to hide it…” He frowned. “You think you can do that?”

“I could wear baggy clothes?” Remus suggested (that was another thing, he’d need to dress to fit back in, which would be difficult when he was now so clean, his hair short and his eyes a little brighter from a more rounded diet. “Hide it in a shoe or something? Though that might show, not everyone has them…”

Then again, he wasn’t too reluctant about that idea. If the two-way mirror meant he could see Sirius’s face throughout this ordeal, that was enough.

He just had to survive, and find a way to ensure Greyback didn’t.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been so long! and thanks so much for all the comments, bookmarks and kudos <3

Sirius had never thought he could despise anyone more than his parents. Sure, there were times when Snape had come close and cousin Bella was _evil,_ but he’d always had a certain kind of loathing reserved for his parents. Until now.

And it hadn’t come when he was in the camp, living next to Greyback all day. It had not even come when he had carried a bleeding, exhausted Remus to the spare bed and healed him. But it had now, it came in a huge wave as he watched his boyfriend stand in the middle of the living room, trying to find a place to tuck a mirror into his clothing as he prepared to return to the man who had ruined it his entire life.

Without Greyback, Remus would have been a different man entirely. Still gentle, perhaps, and kind. He would still have those same brown eyes, but they would be filled with youth, not pain. He might have worked as a healer, or in the Ministry. And he would have attended Hogwarts… Even if they had not been put in the same house (though Sirius always imagined Remus as a Gryffindor), he would still have fallen for his quiet wit and charm, he was sure.

But right now, thanks to Greyback, he was staring at a Remus who was wearing the tatty clothes he had arrived in had dirtied himself up with soil to fit in. He’d been reluctant to wear shoes, even in this harsh November weather, claiming that it would make him stand out a little.

It was moments like these where Sirius had to fight the mad desire to run head-first at Fenrir Greyback with a knife. And the only thing stopping him was the fact that it was _definitely_ Remus’s prerogative to do so.

“How about we have that second date when I’m back home?” Remus asked, sounding far more cheerful than Sirius felt. He was _braver,_ really. They both knew he did not want to go in the slightest, but Remus was capable of putting up with horrible things for the sake of others, Sirius had learnt. “I can show you the stars. I’ll be nice.”

“It’ll be cold, won’t it?” Sirius asked, hoping this didn’t mean Remus was not planning on returning until the weather had changed.

The man shrugged, looking around the flat slowly as though he was trying to remember what normal life, the little he’d been allowed of it, looked like. “We’ll bring blankets and tea. You’ll enjoy it.”

Sirius didn’t care if their second date was cleaning the kitchen, provided it was _soon_ and Remus was _alive_ for it.

“You’ll be back before Christmas, won’t you?” He asked, voice strained. “I- I want to have you here for Christmas.”

Remus, who had probably not remembered Christmas to celebrate it for many, many years, nodded vaguely. “Maybe. Hopefully, but I don’t know. If my family write, will you reply for me? Tell them I’m unwell if you don’t want to write as me.”

He nodded, a muscle jumping in his jaw. That, he knew Remus meant, was referring to keeping them up to date if something horrible happened to him. Though he had only been able to act on his feelings for Remus for about a week, the idea of holding him a funeral was gut-wrenching.

“Yes, but… Come back soon?” He sighed. The pureblood knew Remus was trying to make his exit as swift and quiet as possible, but Sirius wanted to keep him here as long as possible. Even now, he was fading away – pale and distant at the prospect of returning to the place of his nightmares.

“I’ll try. I’ll use the mirror.” He told him, patting it gently. James Potter had not been able to use his mirror for a while, between Dumbledore and Remus both borrowing it concerning missions with the werewolves. “Try in the early evenings. But if you don’t hear from me, I might just be unable to. I think… I think if something happens to me, Greyback will make sure you find out. He’ll be vocal.”

Sirius wanted to be sick – would he wake up one morning to a boastful letter saying Remus had died? Above all else, the idea of him being reduced to a mere pawn for this war was…

It made him want to fight, but differently. There were no unavoidable casualties. Anyone else in the Order, he knew, probably saw this strange outsider as a tragedy waiting to happen. But he was so much more than a pawn in this war, and he, above anyone else, deserved to see its end.

“Be safe. Don’t be rash…”

It was advice Sirius needed to give himself more than Remus, but it didn’t stop the werewolf drawing close and taking him by the collar.

“Keep an eye on Pettigrew. Keep eating and sleeping, talk to James and Lily if you can’t,” Remus said softly. Sirius only half-listened, watching the way his lips moved instead. They were soft, and pink. He would miss them, even after he just left. “Look after yourself too, Sirius. I’ve done this for years, remember?”

He nodded, but seemed to be holding back some kind of emotion as he did so. Remus, despite looking so _tired_ and scared, seemed suddenly so _brave,_ telling Sirius to look after himself when he was about to walk into the belly of the beast.

“I’ll miss you a lot…” Remus was whispering now, leaning closer, until…

Sirius’s eyes fluttered shut and he returned the kiss, desperate to seek every last inch of Remus whilst he still could, trying desperately hard to push away the thought that this could be his very last time with the man.

“I- I’ll miss you too.” He mumbled, offering Remus his arm – Sirius was to apparate him to where they believed the camp was and wait until Remus told him via the mirror that they were in the right (or wrong) place, before heading home.

Remus took the arm offered and they turned on the spot, swirling through the darkness until Sirius could smell air fresher than it ever was in the city and could feel the half-blood straightening up beside him. He was getting better at it, too, brushing himself down and looking around with wide eyes.

And, Sirius supposed, this was where he was starting to learn a little more of where Remus had lived for all those years. Not just in one dingy camp, but outdoors, truly in the middle of nature. They seemed to be surrounded by long grass, standing in the field on the edge of woodland and here, somehow, Remus’s shabby appearance seemed not to be quite so bad.

For him, it was strange – the air was too fresh and he felt as though bugs were crawling all around him, yet this was home for Remus. Home in a kind of abstract sense, in that he knew it well, that he was adapted to this environment. But not home, never really home, when he was this close to Greyback.

What sense of home was there when he was returning to a place which had hurt and damaged him, yet had been all he’d known for so many years that anything else required a lot of adaptation?

He wanted to know, but there was precious little time to ask and far better ways to spend it with Remus. Reaching out, he cupped the man’s grubby face in his hand, feeling the warm skin under his fingers as though it was some kind of miracle, that they had come together like this.

“If something happens to me…” Remus started. Sirius shook his head, fearing that kind of talk, but his boyfriend simply brushed a few stray hairs from his face, sighed heavily and carried on with his eyes fixed on a point in the distance. “I’m not saying it will, but if it does, then visit my family?” He asked quietly, “and _don’t_ blame yourself. Have a good life, you definitely deserve one, alright?”

Insides churning, Sirius just about managed a nod. He had known Remus for so little time and they had been together for even less, but both seemed to share an understanding that what existed between them was deeper than what they dared to let on. The idea of a future they could share was something they had both thought about. And if something _did_ happen to Remus, Sirius felt as though the impact of it upon him would be far deeper than most would have expected considering how little a period he had known him for. But then again, neither men had come across many instances of support and understanding like this.

“I’ll come back,” Remus smiled, an expression Sirius knew was fuelled by bravery he seemed to be lacking. “You’ll see me soon, Sirius.”

It was clear he did not want to make a long goodbye, though. His final kiss was swift. Longing, painful, but with the restraint of a man who knew all too much how pain felt.

Sirius felt frozen to the spot as he retreated. His boyfriend’s figure became smaller and smaller as he disappeared into the trees and the wind fluffed up his hair from behind.

By the time it was clear Remus had been taken to the right place, Sirius had to take a few minutes to collect himself before returning home.

If anything happened to him, he was going to kill Fenrir Greyback. And he wouldn’t show any mercy.

* * *

 

Remus knew this all too well. This ground, its trees and stream. The smooth curve of the hills in the distance and the shady spots which kept off rain in storms. It should have been comforting, to return to such a place. Truly, there was a benignity in the countryside which brought reassurance. But he would have needed an incredible amount of reassurance to feel calm right now…

But until a few short weeks ago, calm was not an emotion he had been privileged enough to have.

For a long time, he had not realised it. Not thought about just how much every step in this place was on an eggshell, every breath was baited. Even once with Sirius, he had slipped into security without truly feeling grateful for what he had once been denied.

Yet back _here,_ it seemed to surge back in a tidal wave of pain and fear. Each step closer into the heart of the woods made his body crumble inside. In Sirius’s flat, he had felt… Whole, or closer to whole than he’d ever been before. Sewn together precariously, perhaps, but a being which functioned and worked. He had been so _happy._

Now, the flakes of his confidence drifted away in the breeze. His mouth was dry, so dry that the stream seemed inviting enough for him to want to dive into it – and drift away, away from all of this.

It was sheer steel and determination which drove him onwards, for his legs were shaking and sweaty.

_Now,_ there was contrast. _Now,_ he realised what this life was in comparison to who he could be back in the city. Squashed and silenced, under the thumb of a man who had looked his parents in the eyes and murdered them in cold blood, a _planned_ murder.

For the first time ever, Remus was starting to think he would struggle not to kill Greyback.

As the trees grew ever denser, fear faded into anger, into white-hot rage which had been hidden inside him for _so long,_ burning him from the inside out until he was losing a sense of himself too… He had just allowed Greyback to do so many of these things without question. His parents’ memory had fallen, too. Surely they would have preferred their son to die than live among the man who killed them and slowly, but surely, pick up aspects of his character?

Each step seemed to make him less human. With Sirius, the first few days had made him feel like an imposter, a wolf in sheep’s – or human’s – clothing, as it were. Slowly, he had somehow come to feel like he fit in. Perhaps still an imposter, but one who did a very good job of putting on a jumper and some jeans and acting fairly like normal people. Now, though, he’d lost that. He was back in the wild and it was becoming him. The last month might never have happened.

It was the sound which stopped him in his tracks, a sound one would not expect in the middle of the forest, the sound of human voices. He was close; he had been right. He had been right about where Greyback was and there was no turning back to Sirius to apparate him somewhere else instead. Remus could hear voices and he didn’t even have a _plan._ He had to suppress the mad urge not to _laugh_ at this all, at the way Greyback always seemed to win, however he played his cards.

“Quiet.”

He recognised that harsh voice too well and it made him want to run far, far away and not return. But Remus found himself frozen to the spot and Greyback was the one who moved, walking over with a leer on his face.

For several moments, he just looked Remus up and down in a way which made him feel rather like Greyback’s food, enough to fill him with a mad, fleeting fear. He wouldn’t- Would he?

“Well, well, well…” He smirked, approaching Remus, now so close he could smell his breath. Had they always smelt this bad? Of blood and dirt and death? It choked him, but there was still no going back.

“Lupin. Come crawling back,” he smiled harshly, pushing the man’s chin up with a grubby, bloody finger. He didn’t move – Greyback was much bigger than him. “Crawling back to Greyback, didn’t you? You thought it was all out there until you realised you’re still _nothing_ without me. That you belong here.”

Jaw set, he did not respond. Fenrir didn’t need it, though, for he was circling Remus now, tugging at his short hair and laughing.

“Thought you could fit in, did you? Thought you could be a nice, pretty, clean Muggle boy who joined a group of _heroes_ so he could fit in?” He sniggered, “you always stuck out here, didn’t you. Too small, too cowardly… They don’t want you, Remus. You belong _here.”_

It was hard when he was in the thick of it. Too hard. Perhaps he had a point, perhaps he was right. He struggled to function around Muggles and other wizards. He didn’t like it here, but…

No. That was ridiculous. He didn’t like it here – he could _choose_ not to be like this, so shouldn’t he?

“You know why I’m here,” he said, more bravely than he felt, his voice deeper than expected. “You need to leave my family _alone.”_

“Oh,” Greyback smiled sweetly, “you noticed my little plan, did you? I wasn’t sure what I should do with your cousins, had you been too cowardly to come. Get rid of them or keep them… Have another couple of little Lupins…”

“You won’t.” Remus snarled. Now it somehow mattered less that Greyback was big – he wouldn’t just stand there and consent to it.

“Well,” the man smirked, “the only thing that can stop me is if you start bugging me every night like you used to. I suppose then, I won’t get a chance. You might even remind me why I don’t like having you around again.”

Heavy. Remus felt heavy. He knew what this meant. To save his family, he would be back in the camp… Indefinitely. Back around people he hated, people who hated him.

And he was going to do it. Even if he never saw that family again, it would save them.

And Sirius…

It would save Sirius, he supposed. There was that.

“If you want your family, Remus, then I want you here. In my sight. At all times.” His hand tightened on Remus’s shoulder, vice-like. There was blood under his nails, and something which looked like raw meat.

“No more of you fighting the Dark Lord _shit._ You’re loyal to me now. You answer to me,” he snarled, nails digging into his shoulder so hard he was sure cuts were forming through his shirt.

Remus jutted his chin out, head tipped back stubbornly. “I’ll be here until I know they’re safe,” he hissed.

“Then you’ll be here forever, boy.”

He wanted to _scream._ He wanted to scream and chase Greyback and seize one of Sirius’s kitchen knives and drive it straight into his heart until he bled to death, until the blood on the leaves turned brown and the crows pecked at his dull eyes.

Yet the only sign of it was in the way his hands trembled when he stared at the man. That would come another day. Today, he just had to make sure they were kept alive.

“You won’t be here forever.”

For just a fraction of a second, the matter of his own mortality seemed to flash across the man’s face and he suddenly looked older. How old _was_ he? Thirty? Forty? Fifty? Sixty? It was hard to tell. But then Greyback smiled nastily, suddenly removing his grip and motioning for Remus to walk with him. He stumbled after, satisfying himself with the thought of a world where Greyback was stone cold dead.

“The Dark Lord will be, he’s making sure of that. And as long as he is, he can ensure that there’s someone here to keep little shits like you in line.”

“I look forward to it greatly,” Remus muttered, making his way into the trees with Greyback, who chose to ignore his comment.

“There’s something else, too, if you want your cousins safe.” He added, rather less calculated this time.

“Oh?”

“Other people have been starting to get… Ideas. They see one idiot and run along after him, even when that idiot nearly gets himself killed.”

He furrowed his brows, unsure of quite what Greyback was getting at here. He was the one who had almost be killed, and nobody else had tried to help him…

It must have showed, because Greyback looked at him as though he was a complete idiot and shook his head.

“Those idiots, those idiots who should have known better, the ones you were kind to,” he growled, “they think you’ve been killed and they rally under your name. Little shits, thinking they can oppose _me.”_

Did this mean what Remus thought it meant? He had been left and people were… Inspired by him? Trying to do what he had done? Trying to take over his role as Greyback’s only opposition within the camp? Though it would have been nice – _very_ nice – for these people to have supported him when he was actually being threatened, he couldn’t help but feel incredibly grateful that he was not the only one. Maybe others _had_ been like him and they had simply been too scared to say anything at all. Did that make him brave? It was hard to tell…

“Oh.”

“Not oh,” Greyback snarled, shaking his head, “if you want any of your family to see the light of day again, then they’re going to have to stop. You’re going to have to tell them otherwise…” The man muttered, glaring at him.

Remus’s resolve crumbled a little; he had finally found some more hope ( _again_ ) and had lost it. He wouldn’t be allowed to show people how he truly felt. He’d have to… Lie to them about it all and pretend he had fallen into step with Greyback.

“Fine,” he said quietly. “I’ll stop them… Rallying around me, or whatever. I can’t be their martyr anyway, I’m not dead, so…”

They turned a curve, heading back in the direction of what Remus assumed was the new camp, his new home for however long it was.

“You’re not to leave my sight.” The man told him roughly. “Not unless I tell you. If I see any sign of you communicating with anyone, I’ll make sure you don’t do it again. You have enough family members for me to do things one at a time.”

He shuddered; but Greyback had made his point. He was cleverer than Greyback, though, and he had his mirror. There would be a way, it might just take some time for him to find it.

And at least if he had to be around Greyback at all times, it meant sleeping in the warmest place… He had to have some sense of hope here. Even if he just resorted to staring at his mirror in the middle of the night and looking at Sirius’s sleeping face…

“He’s back!”

A shout roused him from his mental wanderings – someone was running towards the two of them, staring at Remus in shock.

“I knew it was him! I said it was!”

This was possibly the most positive reception Remus had ever had in this place. People looked utterly shocked to see him – then again, they did think Greyback had almost killed him and Sirius had finished him off. And when Greyback killed people, they usually remained very dead forever.

“Surprise,” he smiled wryly, nodding his head vaguely at the boy – it was a scrawny teenager called Ben, whom Remus had never really liked. He seemed to throw his weight around and seemed to be the kind of person who, if he grew about a foot more, Greyback would have drawn him into his inner circle to replace Remus.

“You’re dead. We saw you killed,” he frowned, “People said-“

“People were wrong,” Remus sighed, running a hand through his hair, “I’m clearly _not_ dead and I’m back, so… It doesn’t matter, does it?”

Ben wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Remus was holding back from something, but merely gave him an odd look, eyebrows raised, and stepped away from Greyback.

The huge man turned to face Remus again, gripping his arm tightly, nails digging in deeply again. The smile on his face was something he would never forget, regardless of how long he spent away from him. There was blood on his yellow teeth and the smell of his breath was _rancid._

He looked at the man with his wild, cruel eyes and smiled horribly.

“Welcome home, Lupin.”

* * *

  
  
Remus had not been sure how he was going to adapt to life on the camp again, but he seemed to slip back into it at a depressing pace. Greyback’s constant presence was draining, bordering on traumatising in moments in the night, but he was used to it again.

People had been shocked to see his face. Clearly, they had all thought he was dead, but he had simply greeted them with the dry weariness of a man who was not yet dead and told them to get on with it.

Around Greyback, he seemed to be a much less nice person. A harsh person, one who had little time for people. But it was hard to be kind when it was Greyback he was stuck to at all times, constantly breathing down his neck, reminding him he was worthless and that if he stepped out of line, his family would be killed.

Only now had he found a chance to contact Sirius, thanks to Greyback’s supervision of him. Even when he left at night, he ensured someone kept an eye on him. But now, he had found himself sitting by the fire at night. Greyback and the others were close by, but deep in a conversation about something he wasn’t allowed to hear. Every few moments, someone would look over at him, but they could only see his huddled silhouette. Not the mirror on his lap.

“Sirius?”

He could only afford to whisper, but something gave him the impression that Sirius would be staying pretty near the mirror as much as possible. It was only a few seconds before the familiar face appeared in front of him, tired and weary, but very much _Sirius._ All those times before, he had not had anything on the outside to reach out to, but now he had this, at least…

“Merlin, fuck. You’re okay…”

Sirius looked as relieved at Remus felt; he had no reason to think that anything had happened to him, but it was easy to worry when he was in a place like this.

“Sorry,” he whispered, “I’ve been unable to get away from Greyback,” he mumbled, lips barely moving. A sound of raucous laughter came from a few metres away and he knew they had opened some drinks.

“Hang on- Is he that close to you?” Sirius’s brows contracted. Remus reached out to stroke his face in the mirror, missing any kind of gentle touch. Only after a few days, his body felt rough and achy, far less human than before.

He nodded, “he’s always gonna be this close, he said I had to rejoin the camp,” Remus told him hurriedly, “the only way to keep them safe is to be under his eye forever, so…”

Sirius’s face seemed to fall by miles, his mouth hanging slightly open with disbelief. Forever was a very long time.

“Then- How-“

“If we can find a way to get him off my cousins and make it safe for you too, then I can leave. Might… Might be a while, though,” he told him, “I’m sorry, I’m trying.”

“I know… I know,” Sirius told him sadly, though the disappointment he felt could not be hidden at all. “How is it there?”

He wasn’t sure what to say – he didn’t want to lie, but it wasn’t going to be fun talking about the fact Greyback was making invasive comments and getting too close because he knew Remus didn’t like it. He wasn’t fairly sure he knew about Remus being in a relationship, too, which terrified him. How long would it be before he started throwing in comments about Sirius?

“Fine,” he managed, “not- Not great, but I’ve survived this long. It’s just- Being not there was good for me…”

Sirius snorted derisively, rolling his eyes far back into his forehead. “Of course it isn’t, Remus. Is there anything I can do? I… I miss you.”

That helped. It hurt, but it helped, because he missed Sirius incredibly much and it was good to know the feeling wasn’t only one-way.

“Probably not,” he sighed, “just find a way to get my family safe without turning their lives upside down? And work out who Pettigrew is working with to sell my whole family out.”

“I’m on it,” Sirius said softly, though he looked rather distressed. “I promise, it’s my priority right now, that and making sure you’re alive.”

“He won’t do anything to me,” Remus shook his head, “even if it’s an act of passion, he’ll take it out on my family again.” He didn’t want to end up sounding self-important, but he was actually fairly _important_ to Greyback now, if only to be someone he could taunt and mock and use as a tool for something bigger than him. “I think he can still do terrible things to me, but I- Feel oddly safe myself,” he sighed. He would far rather his life was on the line than that of people he loved, but Greyback was good at playing him like that.

“Don’t you get any chance at being on your own?” Sirius sighed. Remus had occasionally expressed the tendency to enjoy time on his own when he was living with him, after all. “Not even a couple of minutes?”

He shook his head again, hunching over a little more, just in case someone saw him. He had a great risk of being seen, but his reflexes were fast enough that he would be able to whisk the mirror away before anyone saw. Probably.

“He’s always got someone’s eye on me. I mean, I can go to the loo in private, but that’s it and he would come and find me if I was literally any longer than it would actually take,” he smiled wryly, “not long enough to contact you.”

That wasn’t to say he hadn’t thought about it – he’d thought about it a _lot,_ but there was very little time and it would be hard enough breaking off after this long, let alone any less time.

Remus glanced over at the corner and found Greyback and the others had huddled even closer, laughing harshly about something. A couple of months ago, he’d been part of that (in ways, he’d always been an outsider), now they didn’t even want him at all, other than to baby sit. He stared long enough to notice one of them look back at him and then nod at Greyback before turning away again. Only then was he safe to look back at Sirius, who seemed rather wistful all of a sudden.

“Will you be okay if you have to spend a full moon there?” He asked.

He sighed – that thought had been worrying him a little. Greyback was likely to position himself somewhere that would force him to hurt someone if he wanted to aggravate him more than anything. The man had threatened it before, but now Remus was _sure_ he was going to use him at a full moon to hurt someone if he wanted to. Because he knew Remus would _never_ forgive himself if hurt someone as a result.

“Hopefully,” he told him, lips barely moving. Hope was about all he had now – that and the fact the full moon was still a long way off, because it was only a matter of days after the previous one. If Sirius worked fast enough and there was some kind of miracle, he might evade being used to hurt people. If not… He would just have to keep his head down around Greyback and pray he was more or less forgotten about by the time it came around.

Sirius nodded, but the response was lost; someone had started walking towards him and Remus was quick to stash the mirror back inside his inner pocket. His boyfriend would more than understand, but they would have to get used to not being able to say goodbye any more.

Remus sighed and picked himself up, supposing he was lucky just to have had that much time to talk to his boyfriend.

* * *

  
  
As Sirius Black stared out of the window, he remembered how much Remus had feared his window – this window, for he was standing in his boyfriend’s room, having decided he should wash his clothes whilst he was away, so there was a nice home to come back to.

It had been a week and a half now and Remus had only had the chance to contact him once, which had been a great relief, but not long enough.

All he could be grateful for was the fact he things to do – things, mainly, which involved finding out _who_ Peter Pettigrew was working with in the Order to find out information which he shouldn’t have known. He wasn’t attending meetings any more, yet things seemed to be leaking at an alarming rate. Little things, at first – Marlene McKinnon had acquired a new broomstick for an important mission, mentioned it at a meeting and found only a day later that it had been broken in half.

He didn’t want _not_ to trust anyone, but there was a leak, somehow. Perhaps someone was being stupid and not keeping their mouth shut (Sirius always imagined Benjy Fenwick at that point), but there was a very real chance that Pettigrew had managed to get someone to join him in betraying the Order, someone who did not have to hide their guilt by playing ill for weeks on end.

And was wearing the disguise of a random Death Eater that Remus had once been planning on wearing in order to visit Pettigrew in the hope that he would believe Sirius’s claim that he was a Death Eater and admit his secrets to him a _good_ idea? No  
  
But would he be doing it anyway? Of course.

There was nobody here to stop him and he certainly wasn’t going to sit around and wait to find a better way to help Remus.

So the fake beard and the black robes were all he _had_ as he walked out of the house to find a safe place to apparate (it was a lot safer that way. He made exceptions with Remus, but it would be stupid to apparate from the house by himself and risk Peter tracing him back to it, just another thing that could get him killed).

And by the time he arrived at Pettigrew’s shabby flat, he was practically _praying_ to no deity in particular, praying that this was actually going to work.

Did Death Eaters knock?

Supposing he’d better ring the bell at least, he waited several moments until Pettigrew’s squeaky voice sounded from behind the door.

“W-Who is it?”

It made his blood _boil._ That boy had been their _friend_ and now he was selling them out to Voldemort… They’d cut him off from the Order (well, he had cut himself off first), but he still found a way to get at them… It was sickening.

“We’ve not met,” he said coolly, “but our Master sent me. I suggest you answer, unless you want to feel his wrath.”

There was a squeak and a shuffling sound, but then the door creaked open and Sirius found himself staring a Pettigrew, who looked ill – which was rather satisfying – and quite drawn.

The first few seconds were the most tense, because if Peter was going to realise it was him, it would probably be pretty fast. But there was no such look of recognition on his face as he bowed his head and stumbled backwards quite foolishly. The last time Sirius had seen him, he had only been pretending to be ill, but now he did actually look as though he was sickening for something, which hopefully meant his resolve was being weakened.

Sirius had spoken to James about this and found that his best friend was horrified to find out about Peter, but was also much more… Lenient about it. He wanted to think that Peter had been put under a curse, or was deluded in some way. But it was becoming clearer that this was no such thing and their ‘friend’ had truly betrayed them…

“W-What is it?” Peter squeaked, hurriedly clearing some tissues and pieces of parchment from his sofa. Sirius only perched on the edge, though, glaring at the man.

“The Dark Lord wants more information,” he said carefully, trying not to put his foot in it by not thinking through every single thing he said. “On the Order of the Phoenix.”

A fleeting look of panic crossed Peter’s face, but he puffed his chest up in the closest attempt at bravery Sirius had ever seen from him. “If he wanted more now, why wouldn’t he speak to me himself?”

Sirius laughed, a cruel laugh he wasn’t aware he was capable of. “You’re not important,” he told him dismissively, “sadly, I was given the task. The Dark Lord has… Far better things to be doing with his time than talking to you and trying to gain more information on the Order of the Phoenix.”

“Well,” Pettigrew said slowly, “there’s nothing…” He frowned, looking slightly suspicious. “I’ve not been to a meeting myself for a long time anyway.”

“Which gives me,” Sirius said slowly, “a reason to think that some of your information is coming from another source, if you’ve not been for so long. Who’s helping you?” He narrowed his eyes, “who has been helping you gain information? They should come forth to the Dark Lord. He might have bigger things for you, better things.”

This was a _dangerous_ move… If Peter told Voldemort (whenever they next met) about a Death Eater coming to him to talk about his work, then Voldemort would realise that something wasn’t right.

And Sirius was starting to gain a reputation as someone who liked posing as Death Eaters, really…

“I- I don’t understand you,” Peter said worriedly, “what do you mean?”

“Who,” Sirius said slowly, as though Peter was stupid or something, “are you working with? The Dark Lord wants to know.”

The man shook his head, wrinkling his nose up and looking even more terrified. “I’m working alone. This is me- I don’t know what you mean.”

Either Peter had become very good at acting or this was _genuine,_ which was not something Sirius was expecting. Information had been leaking for a while now and Peter still was not coming to the meetings, so there had to be something.

He supposed there would be other ways of doing this, ways of releasing fake information in front of different people and finding what got out… It would be more complicated than this, but he’d do just about anything if it meant he would get Remus back to safety.

For now, though, he simply sighed and stood up once again, casting a curt look around the little flat and staring down at Peter again, who was a good few inches shorter than he was. “We’ll be keeping a close eye on you, Pettigrew. If you cannot speak the truth to the Dark Lord, then your days may be short.”

He did not look back as he stepped out of the door, but left as hastily as possible, running down the steps and out onto the street, where he apparated as soon as he stepped out of the second door. He didn’t have time to hang around, because the full moon would come eventually and he didn’t want Remus to have to suffer through it with Greyback there.

* * *

 

“So what did happen?”

“I… I betrayed Greyback,” Remus said heavily – that much was true. It was the pretending to these people that he now supported him again which wasn’t. Even Greyback himself knew that he would never gain the support of Remus, but he had to pretend to these people so they would stop… Rallying around him.

It had taken long enough to have a chance to speak to them as Greyback had wished. At first, they had been curious and excited to see him, but nervous about approaching him, as though they did not even believe he was alive. Slowly and surely, people had started to trickle towards him and Remus had been forced to sit them down and tell these people that they were not to rise up against Greyback.

When that was _exactly_ what he wanted.

If it wasn’t going to end up with his whole family and his boyfriend being murdered.

Which it would.

“Just drop it,” he sighed, as Meg opened her mouth to speak. He’d been a little surprised to see her there at first; she’d never really seemed to like Remus, but then she hadn’t liked Sirius or Greyback that much either, so it made some sense. Some people had probably only supported Remus because they were following a crowd, but Remus was fairly open to any kind of support at this point. “It’s all over now and I’m not dead, so drop it. Just stay away from Greyback,” he said in a low voice. “He probably doesn’t like you very much after all this, it’s best to keep your head down.”

He was giving them advice as best as he could, whilst trying to scream secretly that he needed help, needed people to rally up against Greyback with him as soon as possible, but one of his men was sitting right behind Remus and he was loyal to the older man beyond belief, so there was no chance.

“What, like you’re keeping your head down?” Meg raised her eyebrows. “You’re _always_ around him.”

“No wonder you got attacked…” Someone muttered, but Meg shoved them and all eyes turned to Remus again, which was a little unnerving.

“What I’m doing- That’s between Greyback and me, it doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I just came here to tell you to stop what you’re doing because it’s over now.”

He stared into the eyes facing him, praying some of them understood that this was far from over.

“I don’t understand why you’re not _dead.”_ Someone pressed. “We woke up after the full moon and you’d betrayed Greyback and Black came to finish you off yet here you are… Alive. And then Black disappeared.”

Remus shrugged.

“Guess Death Eaters just aren’t that good at killing werewolves.”

_That_ Death Eater especially wasn’t, because he was faking it and he _adored_ the way Remus ran his fingertips through his hair when they were sitting together. He felt the familiar pain in his stomach, but pushed it away. It was soon replaced with the general weariness he felt whenever Greyback approached him, this time sitting on the log Remus was sitting on next to the man and leering down at the ragtag little crowd.

“You’re saviour is safe,” he smiled cruelly, “and your talk, as I told you was rubbish. Now _go.”_

Most of them didn’t need telling twice, thanks to Remus’s warnings, and dispersed to go back to whatever they were doing – finding food and water, playing, talking. He’d been worked extra hard on the camp for some time now, all Greyback’s men were, but there was no happy medium between having hours to wind away feeling lonely and being rushed off your feet.

He couldn’t move, though, not with Greyback beside him on the log.

“It’s sorted,” he told the man grudgingly, “as far as I know, they won’t be rallying around me any time soon. They think I’m loyal to your cause again.”

“And of course,” Greyback said through gritted teeth, “you are not.”

Remus shook his head – it was nice to be able to be honest about something, after all. “I’ll _never_ support that,” he frowned, “you know that. But I’m staying here, I told you. For them.”

It was moments like these that it seemed surprising Greyback _didn’t_ just kill him. He was a hassle and a lot of opposing energy, but…

“I know,” he leered, “I’ll knock you into shape one day. For now, I have some leverage on the stupid Order of the Phoenix too, I suppose. Not that you’re that important to them.”

Remus wanted to say that he _was_ important to them – some of them, at least. They didn’t seem to want to treat him as badly as Greyback did. But that would do nothing but rile the man up, which he couldn’t really afford to do at the moment.

“Fine,” he said quietly, “but right now, I’m not here for you, I’m here for them.”

Greyback seemed to be switching between acceptance and annoyance of that fact, as though he thought if he worked hard enough, he might be able to reign Remus back in. But he also knew that the young man was clever and affected by things Greyback had done in a way which meant he was fairly unforgiving.

“Were you always such a snotty prick?” He frowned, turning to Remus. It _almost_ sounded conversational and Remus was definitely sure he had been drinking or smoking something to sound quite this… Non-violent. “Or did someone breed it into you later on?”

Or perhaps he was just playing Remus, trying to get him angry so that there _was_ a fight and so he had a perfect reason to act against him. Without a real reason, hurting Remus would draw more attention to him and could perhaps even inspire those who wanted to act against Greyback in his name, whom he had _just_ calmed down.

Remus smiled wryly and stared determinedly into the distance, away from Greyback and the camp and the smell, which he was already becoming far too used to. Except now he was even more aware of how dirty he was and had found himself longing for a warm shower instead of this chilly, northern winter. They were usually far further south at this time of year.

“Lots of reasons. Bit of both,” he shrugged. He was doing all this, really, for his parents. Surely that much was obvious? Greyback had _killed_ them.

He made a snarling sound and picked at his horrible teeth with his horrible finger, something Remus was also finding all the more off-putting these days.

“We’re hunting tonight,” he told him, a malicious smile creeping across his face.

He knew full well that Remus would refuse to ‘hunt’, which was Greyback’s way of attacking an innocent child. And if he was told it was either kill or see his family killed… Well, Remus wasn’t sure what he would do, but he’d probably be lucky if he came out of it alive himself.

“I know that look… You think you can stop me, don’t you? You’d like to fight me? To make me stop doing what I’m going to do?”

For so long, Remus had tried to deal with these things by pushing the thought from his mind – he had never been, the most he could do was try not to think about what was happening. But now he felt older and wiser and had no choice. He had to do _something._ But there was nothing he _could_ do.

“It won’t work, Lupin.” He said viscously, “I’ll bring you along this time. Might get you to take a turn in the next… Unless, of course, you decide you’re too good for it. In which case, I’ll know straight where to go with you. I hear your cousins are both young Muggle children?”

A shudder ran down Remus’s spine but his blood was _boiling._ He couldn’t participate in this; no child’s life was worth less just because he wasn’t related to them, and the thought of what Greyback would be doing made him want to throw up. At the very least, the child would be killed. But ‘hunting’ usually meant having a meal too…

“I’m not- You-“

The words failed to form as he had hoped they might. He had until the sun set to find a way of stopping Greyback harming someone and there was _no_ chance. Was this it? Would tonight be the night it was it for him, too, trying to stop Greyback from killing some poor child for _fun?_ He would die for that. But it still might not protect his family, not any more.

And as long as there was a mole in the Order, there was no real chance of moving them into safety, nor Sirius…

Greyback seemed to be watching the journey of horror across his face, staring at Remus with a disgusting sense of triumph, but saying little as he clapped him on the back and stood. Remus knew to get up, too – they would be making their way back to the cave until it was dark. His _only_ hope was if he could huddle in a corner and contact Sirius… Who, with the Order, might have some advice on how to stop this happening. Remus didn’t pray – he had given up on that years ago, but right now, he would have done anything to stop it.

* * *

  
  
Sirius had taken to keeping the mirror beside him most of the time. Perhaps it was not a healthy habit to have, constantly checking it to see if Remus needed him, but he had some gut feeling that if he did not, he would miss something incredibly important. Something life-threatening.  
  
They’d barely spoken, but he still propped it up against the wall when he was in the shower, and against the toaster when he was cooking. Just in case. There was never anything more than the inside of Remus’s pocket to see, but Sirius was more patient than most people gave him credit for. So he waited.

And nothing came.

And still nothing came.

Until-

“Sirius? _Sirius?”_

Sirius could not even see anything more than a dark blur in the mirror, but he seized it, staring down at Remus, torn between delight and fear, his washing up utterly abandoned now.

“Remus! Has something happened, are you okay?”

Every worst fear seemed to come to mind, but Remus was well enough to be talking to him – though he did seem to be lying down and huddled up tightly, whispering…

“I- No- Yeah- Not really,” he mumbled, clearly trying to keep his voice down as much as possible. “This has got to be quick, Greyback’s in the room, he thinks I’m asleep, he’s talking.”

Sirius could hear his voice in the background; it made his stomach twist. And Remus was talking to him with the man in the same room, risking an awful lot to do so. It must have been pretty serious.

“What can I do?”

A look of utter anguish crossed Remus’s face and he started to speak, rather shaky – more so, even, than he had seen him for a while.

“He’s going to attack a child tonight, he’s making me come- If I do anything, he’ll find my cousins and make them his next target. If I don’t attack when I’m told to, he’ll do it too.”

Fear was not something Sirius had seen in Remus in great doses, not like this. But it was incredibly telling that his greatest fear of all was hurting someone, or having someone hurt in his name… _How_ the man could think he was violent and dangerous when he was like this was beyond him, but it was not the time for that.

“Your cousins’ house is under a spell, Remus. He shouldn’t be able to find their address.”

“The mole in the Order,” Remus replied, voice strained, “if they can access _any_ documents, they’ll know, or they’ll be able to get it fast enough. Or… They’ll turn on you to find it out.” He swallowed, Sirius watching his Adam’s apple bob up and down.

He nodded, feeling his own blood run cold. “What will help? What do you need?”

“I need- Greyback can’t get out tonight,” he said quietly, “and it can’t look like I was involved at all. _Please._ Sirius, I-“

Sirius shook his head. Remus did not need to beg or implore him to shed light on the severity of this situation; he would bend over backwards to make sure Remus’s family and an innocent child was safe if he had to.

“I’ll find a way,” he whispered, pressing his lips to the screen in the closest imitation of a kiss they would manage for a while, “the Order will find you one, Remus. I promise.”

It was a big promise to make and not one Sirius could necessarily keep, they both knew that, but there was a tiny part of Remus’s mind which could _almost_ believe it and he was desperate to follow that above all else.

“I’ve got to go,” the werewolf mumbled, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. Soon?”

His last word was a whisper, one which lingered on Sirius’s mind as the mirror was stuffed back into a pocket. Knowing what he knew, he had until night to stop Greyback attacking any child at random in order to save more than one life tonight.

The first port of call, he thought, stepping into the fireplace, would have to be Albus Dumbledore.

The flames engulfed Sirius, lapping at his lower legs until he stepped out of the headmaster’s grand fireplace, dusting himself down gracefully and running to the old man’s desk without invitation. He was not alone, though; Professor McGonagall was standing at the headmaster’s desk in robes of a deep blue colour, staring at Sirius as though he might as well have been a first year student running into the staffroom unannounced.

“Black?” She frowned; sharper than Dumbledore, it was only after she spoke that the old man looked up and repeated his name a little more warmly.

Dumbledore, mercifully, seemed to take in the look on Sirius’s face and the fear in his eyes and gave McGonagall a swift pat on the shoulder, stepping towards the man. “Can I help you? I assume it is urgent?”

“It’s Remus,” Sirius gave the most fleeting looks of apology to Minerva, but they didn’t last long. “He’s- _Merlin,_ he’s not okay.”

Minerva McGonagall took one look at the two men and seemed to make the decision to drift into the background but not make herself absent as Sirius spilled out his story. That Remus would witness the murder of a child tonight if something was not done, that this was a risk the man now faced _every_ night, even…

After he finished, there was a long silence, where the old man seemed to be thinking. But the words which left his mouth were _not_ what Sirius had expected to hear.

“Perhaps,” he said solemnly, “perhaps there is nothing we can do, Mr Black. We cannot stop every death Greyback causes, you and I know that both. Remus’s silence here might save his family. With more time-“

“More _time?!”_ Sirius hissed. Anger was rising in him. Because Remus was a werewolf, was he supposed to be compliant with letting Greyback do this? And was _Dumbledore_ suggesting this child might just be an unavoidable casualty? It was only the presence of McGonagall that prevented him from throwing something. “You’re the greatest wizard _in the world-_ You _have_ to. You can’t just let that child be _killed?!”_

Dumbledore smiled sadly and motioned to his desk. “I have other concerns too, Sirius. Ones which affect great numbers of people, where time too is of the essence. Even I lack unlimited time and powers here.”

Sirius wanted to take Dumbledore’s spindly wand and shove it deep into his-

“Black!”

It was Minerva McGonagall’s voice who separated him from his thoughts. Sirius turned on the spot, ready to defend Remus to her all the more vehemently, but he was met with an expression of kindness and the woman giving _Dumbledore_ a slightly sour look.

“Albus, I’d like to find a way of helping Black with this. This Lupin boy should not have to die, considering what he’s risked for you, surely?”

Dumbledore looked slightly stunned, as though Sirius’s concept of morality was not one he fully aligned himself with but McGonagall’s _was,_ so he should have thought about it sooner. The pureblood didn’t really care, though, because she had promised to help and, regardless of what people said about however great Dumbledore was, she was just as good as him.

“Of course,” he nodded, head bowed low, “I shall continue this alone.”

Sirius’s old Transfiguration teacher beckoned him with a nod of her head and he followed her out of the room, heading towards her office. It was not until they were firmly inside that he broke the silence, helping himself to a seat.

“Thank you…”

In all honesty, however grateful he was seemed to be mitigated somewhat by the fact he was so confused about the woman’s strict defence of him. Not that she _wouldn’t,_ but the professor generally seemed to be fairly happy with what Dumbledore told her.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Black. He’s an Order member.”

She had never even _met_ Remus, so it was a little difficult understanding why she was putting in so much care for him. And she must have seen that in his face, for she sighed and offered Sirius a biscuit.

“Albus sometimes gets carried away in things and… Doesn’t protect what is right before his eyes.”

That twisted Sirius’s stomach for some reason; for so long, he had trusted Dumbledore, this great wizard who stood up for people’s rights. But now Remus had slipped through a veritable crack and he could not tell whether this was something the werewolf would face, even from the ‘good’, or whether this man was older, more fallible than boyhood had ever allowed him to see.

“I- I suppose,” he said quietly, “but you’ve never even met him and you were helping with whatever that was. I don’t see why-”

McGonagall almost smiled, shaking her head slightly. “There are some things he will not see. But your love for Remus is-”

“Hang on.”

Was he, Sirius Black, sitting in an office with Professor McGonagall talking about _boys_ and _love?_ This was surreal, utterly surreal – he almost pinched himself to check he was not going mad, but fell short due to the burning questions spilling out of his mouth.

“I- What? I don’t love him…” He frowned. Did he? Had he ever loved anyone like that? Did love _have_ to mean feelings that way?

Minerva nodded her head slightly, unconcerned. “Of course not. But you do care for him, surely.”

Sirius nodded.

“And one day, might you come to love him?”

Remus’s absence was ripping Sirius apart more than he could have anticipated and the thought of the man, even if he had only known him for such a short time, filled his mind all too often. Perhaps it was not love yet, but if it continued in this way and grew as it had been growing for so long, then it definitely could be. And that _terrified_ him. Yet it was quite exciting.

“If he gets out of this alive,” he said quietly. “Yeah”

McGonagall gave him such a burning look that Sirius was convinced she must have had some kind of secret love life he did not know a thing about (why he did not was unfair, given she had pretty much _guessed_ his own situation. And though it was odd to imagine his old professor loving someone, he wanted her to be happy…

“Then we’ll find a way to stop him being brought into Greyback harming someone tonight. We’ll stop as much more harm if we have to.”

Doubt riddled Sirius in that moment, though. The fear that whatever they did would never be enough, that the enemy would always find another way… It was not always active, but it surely ate away at the back of his mind.

“What if it’s not enough? What if he finds another way and it works better?”

“Then we close every loophole,” McGonagall said grimly, “and we work until we know that tonight, nobody will die.”

Sirius hoped that would be the case every night – except, niggling away at the back of his mind at all times, was the hope that one day soon, Fenrir Greyback would drop stone-cold dead in the middle of a field.

* * *

  
  
In the middle of the field, the little group huddled around an old, bent fork – Greyback had no use for them other than portkeys and the like, and they were slightly easier to see in the darkness than most things. Though that did not stop the tussles between men who were all trying to grip on to it.  
  
Remus, meanwhile, lingered deliberately at the back, trying to buy time, trying to avoid this situation. Perhaps he could run away now; Greyback would have to chase him and if it was lucky, it would be daytime by the time it was over. But then he would be punished, the next night, by seeing his family killed…

It was hopeless. And the feeling filled him, seeping through his body like thick black tar until it strangled him. Just as the horizon had eclipsed the last rays of sunlight, Fenrir Greyback had tipped it over, until darkness felt as though it was suffocating him again. This was his life now, and might be so forever. Silently following bigger, rougher men, forced to witness things he despised and being too cowardly to prevent them…

A little voice in the back of his head reminded him how Sirius deserved someone far better than this. He could not push it away, not when he was back in the midst of all this.

“Lupin at the front, make sure he’s touching it!”

Greyback wasn’t taking any chances; someone seized his hand and placed it on the fork, holding it in place with a grip he couldn’t shake off. Compared to humans, Remus was strong. But put against other werewolves, men who seemed to spend hours trying to build themselves bigger and bigger so they could use their force to hurt others, he wasn’t exactly much use in a fight.

“Better,” Greyback whispered into his ear, placing his hand beside Remus’s and looking down at the smaller man. Both seemed as though they wished to punch the other to the ground, but they were locked in a tackle of far slower violence than that. Remus’s quiet resistance against Greyback’s attempts to grind the man slowly into the ground, until he had no choice but to collapse under his weight. “I know what you’re like, Lupin. Trying to wriggle away from this. It’s you who changed that for yourself… Now I _know_ what you’re up to and can put a stop to it.”

The hairs on the back of Remus’s neck stood on end. Was this his fault? Finding his family had led to joy for him, yes… But for them, it had only caused time and trouble. Whatever part of himself had thought that tracing them would be a good idea was sorely mistaken.

“Ten seconds,” the man muttered. The grip on Remus’s hand tightened but he still tugged and wriggled as best as possible. Panic was seeping into him now. He could not watch this happen and simply sit there. Watching Greyback kill someone innocent... There had to be a way.

“Three…”

Sirius had tried his best, he was sure, but nothing had stopped them using a portkey.

“Two…”

Whatever this was, it was bigger than the Order now and they were unable to stop it. There was no chance, no hope.

“One…”

After tonight, he would be a different man. Things were changing. Would he even see Sirius again?

Remus waited for the familiar tug in his middle, but nothing came – the wind of the evening rushed through the field and tousled his hair as the men cried out in confusion, Greyback the loudest of all.

“What?!”

Remus flinched, but already the man was jabbing the fork with his wand, touching various other objects too in an effort to turn them into portkeys. This time, even that did not seem to work – no blue shimmer surrounded the objects for a fraction of a second, and they certainly did not disappear.

His heart was pounding in his ribcage. Either this was the luckiest anyone in the world had ever been, or Sirius had managed it. And Remus had a lot more faith in his boyfriend than in the stars above – he wanted to cheer, to pull out the mirror and thank him. But under the eyes of many others, all he could do was feign confusion as he was jostled around.

“What is this?!” Greyback spat. Immediately, he had turned on Remus, the fork pointed dangerously at him. He wouldn’t use it was a weapon – he preferred his bare hands, really – but there was a definite chance that the man would do something awful to him. Remus stepped back, reminding himself to be rational.

“I- I don’t know,” he said quietly, “It didn’t work, I’m not sure.”

“ _Why?”_ Someone who wasn’t Greyback snarled from behind him. Remus got the distinct impression they were forming a circle around him, stepping in to threaten him.

He did not break eye contact with Fenrir for several long moments, shaking his head. “I was under your eye the whole time, ever since you told me about this. How could I- How could this be me?”

“What else _could_ it be?” Greyback hissed. Remus wrapped his arms around himself, pressing the mirror close into his side, protecting it from anything which might happen. He definitely did not want to lose his only means of contact with Sirius, especially not through shattered glass stabbing him in the ribs.

“The Ministry of Magic?” He said quietly, “sometimes they take the network down, maybe.”

Remus did not know anything about the Ministry of Magic, other than the fact most people there probably wanted him dead, or in prison. But he supposed they had some control of magic and might have had the ability to stop people taking a portkey.

Greyback seemed to be aware of how little knowledge the younger man had of such things, but he was looking him over like he could not deny the fact Remus had been with him all afternoon, not knowing that the man had been communicating with the Order when he was pretending to sleep. Though highly unhappy, he eventually gave a curt nod and glared at Remus, still wishing to blame him.

“Fine,” he snarled, “we’ll hunt the woods. Lupin, you’d better have the fucking wits in you to kill a deer or I’ll _find_ a way to get out there tonight.”

A shudder of relief ran through Remus. He most definitely had the guts to kill and eat a rabbit.

Now all that plagued him was the knowledge that Greyback could not live off rabbits and deer for a very long time at all. Sooner or later, he would find a way to get them to a settlement and kill someone’s child instead. And when that happened, Remus would be forced to come with him. And given what had happened right now, he would likely be forced to join in…

Head reeling, he stumbled forward at Greyback’s tug on his sleeve. For now, all he could do was be grateful that Sirius had somehow managed to save them here and stagger through the forest until food could be put in their stomachs and he was able to retire to his bed on the cold floor of a cave, shivering and longing for the warmth of Sirius Black.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO'S BACK  
> Seriously, though, I'm sorry if anyone is still reading this that it's taken so long. Uni life is swallowing me up and my immune system isn't helping, but I wanted to make your yuletide gay (can't stretch as far as merry in this chapter, sorry). The editing for this one was a little... Less... Than usual because I'm so tired and just want to get it out, but I hope it makes sense (and, y'know, if it doesn't, let me know!).  
> Also, though I'm nowhere near done posting it, I've almost finished writing this fic (fuuucccckkk) and it'll be about 360,000 words in total but I've written the ending now and it's... Not... All bad

The worst part about all Sirius had done with McGonagall to keep Remus (and various other people) safe was that they could not even be sure if it worked. Remus would probably try to contact him, he always did, but if this had worked, Greyback was probably going to be keeping an annoyingly close and suspicious eye upon his boyfriend, which made the mirror rather redundant.

There had not been anything from Greyback to say he had hurt Remus or his family, which was a positive sign, but Sirius still felt on edge. Even if it had technically worked, the half-blood might have been so great a suspect that Greyback lashed out anyway. And even if Remus wasn’t actually _killed,_ the idea of him lying in a cave somewhere, covered in cuts and bruises from Greyback taking out his anger cut him up too.

He would have distracted himself by going to spend time with James, but an Order meeting slowed that plan down; Sirius found himself having to face their safe house and Dumbledore himself, with whom he was now not sure where he stood. Did the old man hate him for taking McGonagall away to save Remus? Surely not…

And she had been _wonderful._ Having learnt that Greyback used portkeys to get out of the camp and that they knew their relative location, she had calmly told Sirius they could override Ministry controls and block all portkeys leaving that area for a short period of time. Not long enough, but still enough to _buy_ them some time for a better idea. The idea of McGonagall happily overthrowing the Ministry’s regulations on transportation was absurd, but Sirius was only too happy to follow his old professor with it.

All it had taken were some spells to block the movement of anyone by portkeys out of the area with a few simple spells, and Sirius was able to go to bed relatively secure in the knowledge nothing had happened to Remus… Yet.

But night had plagued him like it often did, sending him into fearful dreams about Greyback and his boyfriend and all kinds of harm coming to him so that Sirius now sat at a table in the safe house with a large mug of coffee and a headache, not really wanting to talk to anyone, except perhaps-

“Alright?”

The grinning face of James Potter appeared before him, but it quickly fell to something more like a grimace as he realised his best friend’s current state. Others were milling around, making drinks before the meeting started, but James dropped into a seat beside Sirius and frowned a little.

“What’s wrong?”

James knew about Remus having to go back to the werewolves and the danger he faced there. He had asked whether he could tell his best friend, and Remus had told him he was happy for that to happen (Sirius felt a great amount of relief that Remus trusted James quite so much). But the events of the previous night had been so swift that his friend had been kept out of the loop, a loop Sirius very much wanted him in.

Aware there could be a spy in the room, Sirius lowered his voice considerably and started to speak.

“Not really… We have to intervene with Remus and stuff last night. Greyback was probably going to force him to attack a child and if he refused, would go and kill his family – or me, I suppose – immediately,” he said heavily. “I went to Dumbledore and he said he couldn’t even help.”

All traces of James’s grin from a moment ago were now lost – he looked fairly horrified, especially at the part about Dumbledore, but seemed to have a knack for asking his questions in the right order.

“Where is Remus? He’s safe, right?”

“I assume so,” Sirius muttered, “he reckoned Greyback would say if he _had_ killed him or his family, and now Remus thinks he’s being kept alive so Greyback can somehow use him to keep others in check.”

“Pretty poor excuse for a life…” James said, nodding slowly. “What did you do? Why didn’t Dumbledore help?”

“Said that some kid being mauled by Greyback was sometimes unavoidable,” he screwed up his face, “he was busy with something else, apparently. Something probably more important than Remus because-“

James nodded again; it was probably safer for Sirius not to get riled up and mention that his boyfriend was a werewolf in front of all these people. He did rub his friend’s back a little, though, sighing heavily.

“Who helped? You said we-?”

“McGonagall. I know,” he smiled fleetingly at the raised eyebrow, “she insisted, though. Didn’t like what Dumbledore was saying, and I think we pulled it off. Greyback probably suspects Remus, but he doesn’t have any proof it was him who was involved in the barriers of the portkey network being put up. He can’t find that out unless he finds our means of communication.”

James managed a small grin at this, catching his friend’s eye. _They_ knew that means of communication only too well, having used it for years. But they had done so when separated only by a few walls at Hogwarts and now Remus felt far, far away.

“I can’t believe Dumbledore wouldn’t help- Oh!”

James nearly jumped out of his seat at the sight of something Sirius couldn’t see, but it soon became apparent. He stared at the sight on the floor, a rat scurrying along by the edge of the wall, looking slightly disgusted.

“There’s a rat in here?” Sirius raised his feet off the ground and looked around; nobody else had noticed that Albus Dumbledore was losing his touch, putting them in rat-infested meetings and refusing to defend his boyfriend from threats which plagued him ceaselessly.

The other man sent it away with a ‘shoo’ and returned to the table, the break in conversation inviting new topics.

“You must miss him, don’t you?” He asked quietly. “You- Well, you seemed really close even when you’d not known each other that long…”

Sirius welcomed the warmth and understanding of his friend’s tone and realised that he had become so wrapped up in his own issues that he had failed to notice when someone who made him feel so much better was sitting right before him.

“Yeah…” He grinned apologetically, sitting back. “I do, I really do.”

“You’re smitten.”

“Well…”

James laughed, glancing over at Lily in the corner as though he knew the feeling only too tell himself. It helped, having him and Lily. Sirius knew he wasn’t just going _mad._ Anytime anyone in the Black family had felt something, they generally had it forced out of them until they were cold and unfeeling all over again.

“Do you ever just _click_ with someone?” Sirius asked, rather more earnestly, “I mean, we clicked immediately. But click with them in a different way, where you… Wanna kiss them rather than just piss around with them?” He laughed.

James’s eyes found Lily again, almost on cue. He nodded.

“I guess it might seem to you that it was different for us, but yeah. Do you- Well, do you reckon he feels the same way?”

Sirius had not really considered that much. Remus certainly seemed to be into him, and he did not believe the man was _lying_ to him – there wasn’t much reason to. But did Remus lie awake at night as much as him and worry about how Sirius was doing? Part of him kind of hoped so.

“I think he shows it slightly different,” he said conclusively. “He’s less…”

“Loud? Passionate? Excitable?”

Sirius laughed. Remus had been excited enough when it mattered, he wasn’t too concerned about that.

“I think he’s just scared to let himself be happy. Like he fears it’ll all be taken away from him too quickly. Like he shouldn’t get too used to it…”

It was a feeling Sirius himself had known too well. Every time he had stayed with James in the holidays, he had been forced to remind himself that home was never going to be that good, that his happiness was only temporary and fleeting. It had taken a while to get over that and just when he thought Remus might have a chance, Greyback had swooped in and grabbed him back anyway.

James nodded again, looking thoughtful.

“He’ll be alright, you know that? Even if Dumbledore’s being ridiculous, McGonagall is just as good. And Lily and I will help, we want to help, you know that too?

Warmth spread through Sirius a little more this time and he nodded. Perhaps he had to get better at accepting the help offered to him at times like these, because there was no doubt that James cared for him and… He wanted to spend time with him too.

“Some peace and quiet would just be nice,” he laughed, shrugging his shoulders.

“Well, you know I deliver that well.” James grinned. “We’re well known for creating peace and quiet together. I wouldn’t worry about that…”

Sirius settled back in his chair and chuckled softly; a tired sound, but one of a man who had been pulled out of his state somewhat by a wonderful, fantastic friend.

He would never run out of gratitude for having James Potter in his life.

But Sirius just wished that Remus was there to share it with him.

* * *

 

_He crawled out from under the jumper he had been huddled under all night, shivering. The ground was dewy and though he had seen that before, it was still new to find it under his hands, cold and wet and unlike the warmth of a morning bath._

_The boy crawled forward, shivering even with the jumper pulled over him, drowning his thin body but doing a little better to keep him warm. Beside him, adults and children alike slept in similar piles of clothing, their chests rising and falling steadily._

_But this boy’s movements were erratic, shaky. If he moved fast enough now, if he did it when they are all asleep…_

_He was good at keeping quiet, but surely it was impossible not to wake people. Fear spread throughout his body like a curse, each crunch of a leaf feeling impossibly louder, but faster, perhaps fast enough-_

_“Good morning…”_

_A voice, harsh and cruel and laughing, came towards Remus from nowhere, sending chills through his body which caused him to stop dead. He was so sure everyone was asleep, but had failed to realise a man was sitting alongside them, tearing away at-_

_He tried not to look at what it was, but every inch of his eight year old body shook. He wanted his mother. His father. His books and his bed and his house, because of the sight of blood smeared over this man’s chin and flesh like this had caused him to retch and gag, stumbling in the jumper to get away from the smell._

_Since that night, he had kept his distance from Greyback, hiding amongst the others, but the man was staring him up and down, leering, picking himself up from the grown with blood trickling down his wrists._

_The boy opened his mouth to scream, but-_

_“You can’t scream now.” The harsh laugh, not the words, stopped him in his tracks. He found himself staring up at a man four times his height, smiling, but with an expression in his eyes suggesting he was about to strike – and_ hard. _“Who do you have to scream for? Who’s out there for you?”_

_Not for the first time, the little boy’s eyes filled with tears he could not push away by willpower._

_The loneliness and fear he felt were overwhelming, but coupled with them was the sense of having_ nobody _to turn to in this place. People simply told him to quieten down, not to aggravate Greyback, but he didn’t understand because-_

_“Running away?” The man laughed, and it felt to Remus as though he had been punched hard in the chest. The effects of the full moon were still wearing off, except this time he had woken up to find he was far from potions to relieve his pain and parents ready to wrap him up in a blanket and carry him up to bed. Now, he had found himself lying in a field, bloody and crying and surrounded by people who simply did not care._

_Salt had been poured into the wound when the boy started to realise where he was, and the implications of it all._

_Just like that, everything had been taken. He wanted his Mum and Dad but they-_

_It felt like if he ran fast enough on his bare feet, he might still reach them…_

_“Where are you running to?” Greyback laughed harshly, his eyebrows raised, “you saw what I did to that house. What we did to that house… There’s nothing there.”_

_His limbs felt numb and yet somehow still too heavy for him to move; it was as though there was a grip on his throat which was simply squeezing the life out of him…_

_Now, though, the man turned, stepping close enough to pick the child up, holding him so that they were eye-to-eye. This was not an affectionate gesture – his grip was too tight and he shook from the sight of the blood on Greyback’s yellow teeth. But the hold was strong enough so that he had no chance of wiggling free, instead simply growling into his tiny face._

_“If you think you can run away from this, you’ve got another thing coming. I can destroy you,” he growled, “you have no parents. Nobody loves you – not even they did. You live_ here _now.”_

_He swallowed roughly, opening his mouth in what was a huge act of bravery for such a tiny boy._

_“They d-do love me.”_

_Greyback’s grip tightened further until he whimpered at the feel of his shoulders being crushed and nodded slightly, struggling to keep his breathing steady._

_“They did_ not. _I saw where they kept you, locked up… Not allowed prey… They wanted to force it out of you, when you should have embraced it. You’re_ lucky _to be one of us, one of the chosen people with this power.”_

_The boy blinked back tears furiously and tried to look beyond the sight of a man who had given him nightmares for four years previously. But there had always been someone to help him after the nightmares and now he simply felt… Crushed. Exhausted. There was nobody to pick him back up here, not any more._

_“You should be pleased I killed them. You should be proud. You_ helped _kill them… You brought this upon yourself and you should be grateful,” he hissed. Little drops of spit and blood hit the boy’s face and he nodded meekly. Not because he believed him, or agreed with him, but because there was not really any choice._

_With a smirk, Greyback dropped him to the ground again and stepped close enough that he thought he was going to tread on him as he struggled to get up._

_“Pathetic,” he snarled. “Everyone else manages.”_

_Shaking, he pulled himself to his feet, his tiny body nothing on Greyback’s, but somehow still a red-hot ball of defiance which was going to explode one day._

_He was achy and his stomach felt sick and there was nothing anyone would do about it. There was no escape here, no mercy, no chance of love or affection or anything other than being kicked around by Greyback, too tired and scared to defend himself. And slowly, he was starting to realise that this was all he had now – a group of people in the woods who he only stayed with because of fear, because he had nowhere else to go. And just as swiftly as Greyback had killed his parents, the resolve of the once cheerful, if a little broken, boy, had broken down. The defiance was still inside, but the fear of the outside kept it hidden and kept him hiding from the man who killed his parents._

_For a long time, Greyback thought his work was done, or slowly being done. The man still stuck his nose out, rejected the things he said and did and tried to impose some of the values of his parents upon them all. But behind all this, something bigger was boiling in Remus, like a steam cooker, seeping out at the edges until he actually burst._

_And it was a long, long time coming, but it only took about twelve years for Remus Lupin to crack._

* * *

  
He awoke dripping with sweat, screaming out into the night so that the sound echoed around the cave and others shuffled around him, angered by the disturbance. But that was the last thing on Remus’s mind. Arms aching, he crawled to the entrance of the cave, gasping for lungfuls of air, fresh and cold in his lungs but so welcomed.

His cheeks were wet with tears but that did not matter now – he had to calm himself down, to wrap his arms around his body in an embrace which would never be what Sirius gave him, or even Ezra, or his mother and father…   
  
For so long, this was what he thought he’d have forever. And then he’d been given a taste of something wonderful, something so _freeing_ before it had all been ripped away from him again. It made it worse, somehow. This time, he had feared that there was no escape from here _ever._ He existed in limbo, without any kind of future except one of fear.  
  
“Lupin?”  
  
A voice behind him snarled seconds before someone gripped his shoulder tightly. He did not have to look behind him to know who it was, because whilst the others had returned to sleep, this man had not. Instead, he pulled him back roughly, to stare into Remus’s tear soaked face and – though slightly sleepily – growl.

“What _now?”_

The eight year old boy who was too scared to respond to Greyback was gone now, though, replaced with a man who had seen too much and said far too little. He picked himself up from his crouch on the floor to face Greyback, now tall enough to look the man in the face without too much difficulty.

Brown eyes, usually so warm, met Greyback’s greyish ones with a look of pure hatred. A shiver ran up and down his back; he was trying so hard to hold back, not to get aggravated… But the dream was just another reminder of what the man had taken for him, and he had far too many of those.

“A nightmare, I guess,” he shrugged. Not too long enough, he would never have told Greyback such a thing, but now he simply did not _care._ Maybe it made him weak, but if that was the opposite of what he was, then he wanted to be weak – he would embrace weakness with open arms.

About as quickly as he expected, Greyback laughed loudly, pulling the man out of the cave roughly and into the clearing nearby. It was still dark, and very cold, but Remus didn’t really notice either of these things.

“Pathetic.”

Remus balled his fists, but kept them by his side, pushing desperately for the rational self which Greyback had always hated so much more. The man _wanted_ a fight, so perhaps it was best for him not to fight back.

“I don’t know, though,” Remus said quietly, “is it pathetic? Missing my parents, worrying about my family, actually _feeling_ things.”

Greyback laughed and shrugged. “Hasn’t exactly got you anywhere, has it? Where did _feeling_ things take you? Out of here and then right back in, because you’re far too pathetic to _go_ anywhere.” He smirked.

Whilst he was relaxed, Remus seemed to be squaring himself up to something, his shoulders raised, fists clenched.

“This is out of choice, you know that,” he hissed. He didn’t really have a choice – or perhaps he did, but for him there was no other way of doing this than to save his family.

“Then you’re foolish,” Greyback laughed, “foolish enough to _feel_ in a world which hates you. What did the wizards and witches say to you, Lupin? Didn’t they call you dirt and kick you out. They don’t accept you. They don’t _want_ you.”

“Some do,” he said quietly, chin raised, “some of them want me…”

He was more ready than the other man to use physical force here, but thankfully had some sense of self-restraint, even if he was shaking with the effort of it.

“Liar. You don’t belong there and you’ve blown your chance here,” the man hissed, “I’ll keep you around, Lupin. But only to watch you suffer. Only so one day, I can see that I’ve finally defeated you.”

He wanted him _dead._ He looked up at that man, the man who had killed his parents and his ex and threatened his family and would turn on Sirius if he knew about it. He had spent so long fearing that he would hurt anyone, that he would be the cause of harm or pain or death and now, _all_ he wanted was to rip this man apart and he was fairly sure nothing would stop him-

Remus stepped forward, eyes wide, teeth bared, losing the control he so carefully kept at all times. Maybe this _was_ him being defeated, succumbing to the wolf, but he didn’t care.

Greyback leapt forward, bloody nails bared. And then something in them caught Remus- The blood he’d seen when he was eight, the murdered child, the family he had just gained.

If he attacked Greyback now, they’d be dead. Or worse.

It took an immense amount of effort, but he pulled himself back, shaking as Greyback seized him by the chin, an uninvited touch but one he did not bat away. As ever, he had found himself freezing up, terrified and tired and in limbo. Utter, complete limbo.

“Coward.” He spat, the drops reaching Remus’s grubby cheeks.

His jaw tightened, but he said nothing, not even as Greyback kicked him to the floor. Not even as he kicked him in the stomach. Remus no longer knew if this defiance was bravery or cowardice, but he would continue if it was what was needed to keep his people alive.

And right now, he needed them more than ever.

* * *

  
Since his incident with Greyback, Remus had found himself keeping to the shadows even more than before. Even as the full moon became closer, he was careful to keep away and avoid aggravating the man, because it would render him in too much trouble. Greyback didn’t seem to care; he kept Remus under his eye enough so that the man had no chance of contacting the outside world, but he barely spoke to him now. For some reason, it seemed as though he did not want to aggravate him either – or perhaps he was simply too busy.  
  
At least until the night of the full moon.  
  
It had rendered Remus terrified, as usual. The physical pain was nothing in comparison to the knowledge that he would be set loose somewhere, violent and ready to kill and there was nothing he could do about it. But up until a few hours before it happened, the nerves had not escalated as they did now, not until Greyback stepped into the cave, where he was sitting among three of his men – and stared at Remus with a look that turned his insides cold.  
  
“Lupin.” He snarled. “Here, now.”  
  
Though aching, Remus was still quick to make it over to the man, staring into his face with a feel of cold dread as the man reached for his shoulders, securing him to the spot.  
  
“You’ll be interested to know, men,” he said in a growl, “that I’ve found the source of our troubles the other night in my meeting today.”   
  
A set of teeth grazed against Remus’s neck, making marks they didn’t need to; he had enough already for Greyback not to need to do so, but this didn’t stop the man from doing so.

Another looked up, tilting his head to glance up at Greyback with a scowl. “It was him?”

“We should have known,” Greyback spat in his face, “traitor. I didn’t think you _clever_ enough to be doing this. Not remotely, but this _shit_ has found a way of contacting people on the outside. My informant working for the Dark Lord told me he doesn’t know how, but he was involved in making sure the portkey network was closed off that night.”

Three men not only turned to look at Remus, but raised themselves from their seats, making their way towards him. He wouldn’t have run if he could, though, staring at Greyback without blinking, his stomach churning. It had not set in yet, nothing other than that animalistic instinct that he needed to think, and _fast._

Someone reached for his neck and squeezed. Hard.

_Now_ he struggled, pulling against the force as his cheeks went pink, barely able to focus on the sound of laughter and the damning knowledge they were only just getting started.

The grip loosened and he gasped, taking in air as the three looked down at him.

“How did you do it?” One growled, “How did the traitor ruin our plans?”

In what he assumed was a rather stupid move, Remus shook his head. If they found the mirror, they would find Sirius and realise just how closely they were connected. They were probably already in danger now, but he wasn’t going to make it worse.

But Greyback, unexpectedly, laughed. “You can tell us or not tell us, Lupin. I don’t give a fuck anymore. After tonight, I’ll be sure you never step out of line or try to contact those stupid people again.”

The blood seemed to stop pumping in his veins.

Tonight was the full moon. Tonight, Greyback was punishing him. He was going to be set upon his family and forced to-

“NO!”

His cry echoed through the cave, but nobody cared for it. Someone tugged hard on his hair and he stumbled to stay upright, looking up in horror.

“You- You don’t know where they live.” He said quietly. “You won’t be able to find them.”

“Idiot. I have a man in the Order. _He_ know exactly where they live… He knows _everything._ Even if you do contact your precious people, he’ll be there. He’ll be one step ahead of you. I’ll be one step ahead of you.”

_Who,_ though? Remus had met the Order. Sirius would only be talking about this in front of a few select people. James. Lily. Dumbledore. He trusted them all – they wouldn’t sell him and his family out to Greyback, surely? If they had been disgusted with what he was, then he would have known.

There was nothing he could say, or do. They were going to die, and it would be his fault.

Hopelessness knocked Remus like a wrecking ball. He’d have no chance of contacting Sirius now, not with enough information to save his family – if Greyback was right, then someone in the Order was on their tracks and could inform him.

After what happened tonight, he might still be alive, but he wouldn’t want to be. He would be as bad as Greyback… Worse, even, because this was his family and his own stupidity had caused him to get them killed.

Begging was all he had…

“Please,” he mumbled, staring, “I- I’ll give you what you want. I’ll stay here forever. Just _leave them._ They’ve not done anything.”

“But you _have,”_ Greyback laughed, and Remus felt vomit rising in his throat and his head spin. “This is your fault, Remus. I want to make sure you know that. Tonight, we start on your family. Maybe that’ll finally teach you a lesson…”

He wanted to scream. He wanted to scream and kick and kill Greyback but his wand was in his pocket and his arms were secured, but then he was struggling and kicking, twisting against the strong men in the hope that he could get free from this _hell_ until-

Remus saw the raised fist with wide eyes and felt its impact with a grunt. But then stars formed before his eyes and everything went black. By the time his body fell to the floor, it was limp.

* * *

  
The fact it was the full moon tonight was proving to be a distraction for Sirius when it was highly unwanted – there was too much going on right now in the Order. Secrets seemed to be slipping and leaking faster than they could cover their tracks and nobody understood how. Pettigrew had not been with them for weeks now and even things whispered in the confidence of one or two people still led to trouble. It was as though someone was gaining this information somehow and leaking it tactically. But nobody knew how. And it was getting critical now.

“Another one,” James had said heavily. They still had Order meetings now, but rifts were forming in their trust – nobody truly knew what they could say. It was not uncommon for fake plans to be made and, after the meeting, for them to be changed.

Sirius himself had been told to spy on Death Eaters in one location and Moody had secretly informed him after the meeting to go elsewhere. He had found himself ambushed by tens of them, unable to do anything but escape, in a move which must have been _planned._

But there was no chance Moody was selling them out…

“What now?” Marlene McKinnon asked from across the table. She looked as exhausted as Sirius felt – this game of cat and mouse now had a new player, one who slipped between their fingers.

“Last week,” James said heavily, “we moved the family of someone who had tried to escape being a Death Eater into a safe house. Only three of us knew where… And they were found dead this morning.”

“What if there’s someone… Recording the meetings, somehow?” Benjy Fenwick tried – but they had all entertained that notion before, until Moody had told them there was no way at all they were doing so. There were too many spells protecting them here to make that possible.

“Perhaps the Imperius curse?” Lily tried, though she too looked rather hopeless.

“Unlikely,” Moody frowned, “information is being released bit by bit, as though the mole has tactics. If someone was under the curse, why not release all the information and get us killed and stopped immediately?”

“They wouldn’t… Unless they had their own agenda, surely?” The redhead said quietly, met with several nods.

Sirius leaned forward, ignoring the looks the dark shadows under his eyes gained. “Which brings us back to Pettigrew.”

“Who’s not been here for weeks,” James said glumly.

They were gridlocked, trapped. This conversation was likely being overheard, they all knew, but someone who would answer to Voldemort. And when the time was right for _them,_ this information might be released.

For a moment, silence fell upon them, the silence of a group of people who knew they were being backed into a corner and could find very little to do about it. And Remus, Sirius knew, was in the exact same position as them, if not a worse one. Tonight was the full moon and he would be unable to resist the man at all without risking his family being killed.

Of course, he could protect his family with all sorts of magic.

But that required a conversation.

And the spy within them had a pretty good habit of overhearing conversations. It wasn’t as though they hadn’t tried, or hadn’t put huge amounts of protection on the home in which Remus’s family lived. But all the spy had to do was tear them down at the last minute and they would mean nothing.

It set his mind on how Remus must have felt in this moment… Each time they’d spoken, he had seemed as though he was trying desperately hard to keep his spirits up, or maybe just not to let on how hard things were. The bags under his eyes and the look within them told another story, though, and Sirius found himself thinking that if he ever made it back here alive, Remus would need a lot of time and a lot of space to get back to being healthy.

“So what _do_ we do?” Lily speaking earnestly from across the table brought Sirius back to the conversation. She caught sight of him for a moment and smiled fleetingly, before continuing. “Clearly, we’re being sold out. But we can’t just sit on it. We can change location, search things and people. We can’t just _stop.”_

There was a general mumbling of agreement with her – one of the Prewett brothers, Sirius wasn’t sure which, clapped her on the shoulder and James squeezed the woman’s hand under the table.

“We could try veritaserum,” Fenwick looked up darkly, an idea which was less well-received. Anyone who outright opposed it would face a great deal of suspicion, but the idea that they could no longer trust each other was tearing the Order apart from the inside out. They didn’t even need Voldemort to stop them now, not when it was happening by itself.

“I’ll do it if we have to,” Sirius said abruptly, “but isn’t that exactly what they want from us? To see us fall apart inside so they just have to swipe in and finish us off quickly? I… I like to think I can trust everyone in this room. If we can’t, we could do it, but… We’re playing right into their hands if we do.”

Even Moody grunted an approval at this and Sirius sat back, watching a rat poke around in the skirting again. They truly _were_ falling apart as a group, with rats and spies and all sorts infiltrating them. Nobody had seen this coming, and it was that which was ripping them apart.

“Veritaserum can be fought off anyway,” Moody concluded, “and I wouldn’t be surprise that if our spy heard this, they would try to poison it. There are few of us left as it is, we can’t afford that…”

He looked around generally, catching several sighs from members of the group. Sirius nodded, but he was still caught looking at the rat. He’d not seen that many in his life, but it looked fairly similar to the one they had seen when they were last here, which was a reassuring comfort that nobody was cleaning the place.

With that, though, someone decided it was time for business to be attended to and Sirius fell into a kind of stupor, half-listening as he both tried and tried not to think about what Remus was doing, feeling, seeing right now. How lonely it was. How cold and aching he was…

* * *

The end of the meeting was a welcome relief to him; Moody finished off by assigning everyone various tasks, but these were subject to change, and asking Sirius to stay back, which did not surprise him.

James and Lily lingered in another room, waiting for him so that they could spend the evening with their friend, but he wasn’t sure he felt like it anyway.

So, stepping forward to greet Moody properly, Sirius was more than happy to drag it out, all night if he had to.

“What is it?”

“It’s the full moon tonight, isn’t it?”

Sirius nodded.

“What’s the latest on Lupin? What are you planning?”

He was rather touched that the man was asking after Remus, even if it was only the businesslike task of not getting Order members killed, really.

“We’ve not spoken for a while. I don’t- When Greyback threatened to kill a child, we closed off the portkey network but I don’t think he was suspected, not with enough grounds, anyway. So he should be okay. Well, not okay, but… Alive.”

Moody nodded. “Where are his family? I trust they’re still under protection?”

Sirius’s eyes flitted away for a second at the sound of the rat still poking at the skirting; he frowned, a little put off by the sight.

“Are we going to get rid of this vermin problem?”

The man looked over his shoulder sharply and frowned. “I keep seeing rats… It must be the house.”

“It’s the same rat,” Sirius raised an eyebrow, “I saw it the other day, I think it’s just moved in…”

It only took a flick of Moody’s wand to raise the rat into the air, but it started to struggle immediately, twisting and turning in mid-air as Sirius – grimacing and remembering Remus had done much worse – tried to pick him up. Seconds later, there were scratches running down his hands, blood blossoming within them.

“ _Shit!_ Ouch- What is this thing?” He scowled, holding the rat at arm’s length as it attempted to bite him. “Conjure me a cage or something? I can’t kill it right here. I’ll get some rat poison at home or something.”

To his relief, the rather grizzled man obliged, waving his wand so that a large cage appeared before them now, into which Sirius dropped the animal and shut the door with a shudder. He didn’t dislike rats, not on principle, but this one seemed _feral,_ even now biting and clawing at the cage in an effort to get out.

Now, though, they were concerned with the conversation at hand. He tried to remember what Moody had asked, to relay the information about Remus’s family’s safety back to him.

“They’ve been moved for the night,” he said quietly, telling him the address in only a whisper. It wasn’t far from where they had been, but a careful plan involving a burst water pipe had shifted them into another house for three nights around the full moon. “We don’t know if they’re even targets right now, but it’s better to be safe.”

The older man nodded, also staring down at the rats in the cage with an expression that Sirius could not quite read, as though he was able to see something he couldn’t.

“Might you hear from his soon?”

“Anyone’s guess,” Sirius said heavily. He doubted he would hear from Remus, but given that they all rested after the full moon, he might have a chance at speaking to him, if on the off chance the man was awake at a time when others were not. “I hope so, but we can’t bank on it.”

“Do you think he’ll have any idea of who the spy is? Might they be collaborating with Greyback?”

Sirius shook his head this time, knowing just how much he was being kept in the dark now. “Nah, he’s being kept at his side but isn’t allowed to be involved with him, as far as I know. I guess we’ll find out how it was tomorrow.”

It was weird to be saying that to Moody, acting as though it didn’t really matter how Remus fared at the full moon, when in reality he felt tight in the chest thinking about the man ripping himself apart as he did.

“I’ll deal with the rat,” he muttered, picking up the cage and staring down at the creature, which was still struggling to get free. “I’ll see you soon, if the spy hasn’t killed us by then,” he said heavily. With that, Sirius turned on his heel and left the room in silence, feeling the weight on his chest even heavier than it usually was.

Something in the back of his mind was telling him that things would change tonight, that Remus would not be with Greyback by the end of it. But he wasn’t sure whether that was a bad or a good thing by this point.

* * *

  
Remus was only coming to when the sun was going down, groaning painfully. He was lying on a floor somewhere, but not the one he had been knocked on by the werewolves. Somehow, they had transported him by a portkey and he was now…  
  
Well, it was hard to tell. His head still hurt an awful lot and his vision was woozy. But he appeared to be lying in the middle of a field, surrounded by damp grass. In the distance, trees lined the field, but they did not seem to be dense like they were in the middle of a forest. Rather, he got the feeling they were in open country, still far from cities, but close to villages and farms.  
  
And the smell…  
  
The smell was actually incredibly encouraging, warming. Familiar to him, comforting. Remus had not yet realised why it was so welcoming, and when he did, it would lose the effect entirely, but right now, it was still nice to lie among the grass and gather himself together.

There was movement around him, others slowly walking, muttering things he was struggling to make sense of right in this moment. But he was focusing on inhaling and exhaling the fresh air, his body aching as it prepared to transform, and him barely noticing…  
  
“Finally.”  
  
Greyback snarled, breaking the silence unexpectedly, and Remus looked up to see the man staring over his face. Closer to the moon, he looked even harsher, his features more wolfish and eyes more threatening and dangerous.  
  
And it was then that it settled in. The smell he knew so well, the fields, the mountain in the distance…  
  
This was his homeland, this was where his family came from. The smells of his childhood and the smells he had found so familiar when he had come to visit his cousins…  
  
The moon peeked threateningly over the horizon. And slowly, things started to click into place, but not before Greyback and the others could seize him, pushing the man to the ground as his body started to shake.   
  
The field smelt like the ones he had known growing up because it _was_ one of them. And the trembling of his body was due to the coming full moon, the one he could not fight off. He would not be able to control himself in this state. In the distance, a single cottage’s lights glinted out through their fragile glass windows. Greyback and the others were pointing in the direction of them.   
  
And Remus knew that would be exactly where he would be heading when in wolf form. In the exact direction of his cousins’ house.

It was only the pain which stopped him from vomiting, writhing and screaming against the hold Greyback and the others had on him. He had to run away, to escape, to get as far away from these people as possible except he _couldn’t._

“You don’t contact Dumbledore’s fucking side and think you can get away with it, Lupin. I warned you. And now this’ll stop you,” he snarled, spitting directly onto his face. “We’ll kill them. _You’ll_ kill them…”

Adrenaline was rushing through Remus’s veins like a monsoon, but there was nothing he could do about it. Screaming and struggling against Greyback _wasn’t_ working, and there was no time, not even in front of Greyback, to get a message out to the Order about it.

And as it always did, the full moon rose in the sky. Remus tipped his head back and let out the first scream of many as fur sprang from his skin and every single organ collasped and failed, all in sync. He wanted to black out, he wanted to faint.

He wanted the full moon to end him before he could hurt anyone else…

Somewhere a little way in the distance, the cottage sat still. In its upstairs bedroom, the glow of a nightlight was turned on and then, not too long after, off again. In their beds, the children were asleep, blissfully unaware about the wolves which lurked below them.  
  
But at this distance, they stood no hope of reaching morning.

* * *

  
The full moon glowed in the sky like a beacon, an eerie nightlight one could not avoid. Sirius had once liked its presence, but now it mocked him, lighting his path at a time where he knew that Remus’s was darker than ever before, until it was uncertain and murky. There were only one thing truly certain now; Sirius would not be sleeping tonight.  
  
The man carried the rat’s cage into his flat and placed it before where he chose to slump on the sofa. Somehow, it had not tired at all, continuing to struggle against the cage, biting at the bars. He knew it was vermin, that he was supposed to kill it, but he could not bring himself to. And tonight, above all others, that spellwork was bound to have messy consequences.

With only the sound of scratching at the cage, Sirius sat for a long while, in wait of news he was terrified of receiving. Somewhere around the hour of three or four, though, he fell into a doze, head lolling onto his shoulder as even the rat appeared to settle down somewhat…

“ _Fuck!”_

Sirius shot like a bullet from his chair, blinded by grogginess but convinced he had heard the sound which had woken him – a loud _bang_ sound, one which had filled the peaceful room so loudly that it could not have been his imagination, or a dream.

He scratted around tiredly for a few seconds before his eyes located the problem; the broken cage, the rat scurrying out of it, towards a place in the walls Sirius _knew_ had a gap big enough for a rat to fit. Without really thinking, he lunged, hand on the wand he had already drawn.

“Gotcha!”

He seized the rodent, but the movement of his wand in doing so had opened doors to other things, for it was growing in his hands. At first, he panicked, thinking of the transformation Remus went through at the full moon – this one was certainly not wanted either – but then the rat jumped from his hands and Sirius did not have _time_ to think as it disappeared and something else entirely appeared before him.

Peter Pettigrew, it appeared, was standing in the middle of his living room, sniffing and digging through his robes for his wand. Sirius, far quicker, had already trained his on the small man, pointing it directly at his neck as his blood ran cold.

Pettigrew was a _rat?_

_Pettigrew was an animagus?_  
  
Something inside Sirius was surprised by that fact alone. He had never thought his old friend capable or clever enough to undertake such a feat, but he had clearly mastered it…

“Sirius- Sirius, listen-“

He was squeaking, shifting his dirty feet around on the carpet, but Sirius did not want to listen. He wanted to think, because things were starting to make a little more sense all of a sudden.

This was the rat he had caught in an Order meeting. A plan, humble rat that he had seen in their meetings twice, but…

“Explain,” he hissed, “this had better be good.”

The man stepped closer, wand still directed at his old friend’s neck.  He didn’t want to jump to conclusions but he already had and this one would mean that… Well, it would have meant a lot of things.

“I’m j-just a rat,” he whimpered, “I learnt to become one. There’s no harm there.”

It took Sirius an incredible amount of self-control even just drawing in the next breath.

“And turning up in Order meetings?”

“I’m i-in the Order. I was i-ill, but I felt it less as a rat…”

Two or three years ago, Sirius might have believed him. He might have given the benefit of the doubt to this strange boy who had been placed in their dorm with them when he didn’t even really seem to have many of the traits of a Gryffindor. Peter had worshipped James and Sirius – particularly James – in a way which he had not understood and, by the end of it, not particularly enjoyed. Somewhere inside him, he knew he had not treated Peter as well as he should, but… If he was the spy, then this was something else entirely…

“You sold us out…” He said, voice low, “you’re entering meetings as a rat, overhearing everything and trickling that information down to Voldemort as far as you see fit… To protect _yourself.”_

Peter flinched, but he did not deny or confirm that statement. Instead, he shifted from one foot to the other, cowering under the wand and not quite meeting Sirius’s eyes.

“Y-you didn’t make life easy for m-me at Hogwarts.”

For a fraction of a second, Sirius felt guilty, but that was only how long it lasted. They had teased Peter, yes. They had mocked him about getting a girlfriend and not doing well in lessons and they probably shouldn’t have done. But Sirius’s own parents had gone on a family-strong mission to exclude him from the family and make his life hell. _Remus’s_ parents had been _murdered_ and he had grown up bullied by Fenrir Greyback… Having a difficult time of life wasn’t an excuse for killing muggleborns, surely?

“That doesn’t mean you had to _betray_ us,” he spat, wishing he had done so directly in Peter’s face, though the floor seemed to get most of it. “You’re not denying this, Pettigrew. Which only makes me think it’s true… You’ve sold us all out to Voldemort, haven’t you?”

Peter seemed to be tottering between falling into whiny submission, begging for a second chance, and finally taking a step up to the role, defending his work and opposing Sirius in combat. For a decision so important, his failure to choose was probably his downfall, for Sirius only took two seconds to wave his wand so that the man was bound by invisible ropes, forced onto the spot on the sofa he had been occupying for such a long time.

“What about Remus?” He hissed, “have you interfered there?”

The slow, unsteady nod made Sirius’s stomach plummet several feet through his abdomen, until he was forced to sit down and extract the rest of the truth from him.

“Greyback knows about the Order blocking the portkeys.” He said, sniffing.

Sirius wished to _scream,_ to punch him hard in the head and knock him out, but he needed Peter right now, as much as he loathed to admit to that fact.

“When?” Sirius swallowed roughly, “when did he find out?”

If he had known about this for a while, perhaps Remus was still safe… He would have heard, he would have known if something had happened to him from Greyback’s boasting. Having heard nothing of the sort, he could only hope that his boyfriend had been kept alive.

But it appeared that was a moment of naivety that he could not afford to have again. Peter licked his lips and raised his head.

“Today. Greyback wasn’t happy.”

The world seemed to have been turned upside-down. Pettigrew was talking to Greyback, Remus was…

He didn’t want to think about that.

“What’s he doing? What’s happening to Remus now?”

Fear was becoming a constant for Sirius now, but he had to wade through it, because it could be the difference between life and death for Remus. If he’d been in the Order meetings for so long, then he knew everything… He could have been spying on every single conversation held, including the ones where Sirius had told individuals where Remus’s family were living and being protected…

By now, their protection could have been destroyed…

And if Remus was a wolf…

“ _Tell me!”_ He hissed. The moon was sinking down into the sky and morning was surely coming.

“They’ve gone to his family’s house, as wolves. Greyback wanted to punish him…”

Sirius’s hands froze in mid-air – his entire body did. A second later, though, he was holding himself back from _strangling_ the man. Remus was going to be used to attack his own _family._

He had to go there. Even if it meant fighting a werewolf, even if it meant risking his own life, because Remus would do it for him and he _knew_ that the man would never, ever forgive himself if he caused his family to come to harm.

He couldn’t _leave_ Peter here, but he certainly wasn’t bringing the man who would likely be the cause of his boyfriend’s death – or worse.

It only took a few seconds to reach a solution, though. The fireplace was a solid reminder that James Potter and now Lily Evans, wherever they were, would always be with him to fight these battles, even at ridiculous times.

Eyes still firmly fixed on Pettigrew’s writhing, whining body, it only took a matter of seconds for him to call in both of them, sleepy and wearing pyjamas, but already gripping their wands.

Two pairs of eyes took in the sight of Pettigrew on the sofa, looked at Sirius and looked at one another, comprehension slowly dawning on them. It said a lot that neither of them struggled to work it out and though both appeared not to want to come to terms with the fact an old friend was betraying them, there was no doubting that they did in fact _believe_ Remus.

“What do you need?”

Lily’s voice was soft and reassuring under this much pressure, but Sirius’s heart and mind were still both racing to get out there. There was little time to spare.

“Stay with him? Keep an eye on him? Contact Dumbledore?” He asked, looking pained.

“What, and let you go to them on your own? I think not,” James frowned, whipping around.

“I don’t have _time_ for backup.”

“Then I’ll come.” Lily Evans folded her arms over her chest and looked back at James. “You know Peter better, you might be able to get more from him.”

It was saying something that James did not fight against that. He simply nodded, swallowing roughly and planting a firm kiss on Lily’s lips before drawing back.

“I’ll get the Order out here,” he promised, “stay safe…”

Sirius did not really stop to consider how James was having to say a goodbye to his best friend and his girlfriend in one, too busy worrying about the fate of his own boyfriend. The sun was coming up and Sirius knew better than anyone that Remus and his family needed help, and they needed it fast.

* * *

  
Damp. Damp, wet grass – from the rain, not from the dew – under his feet, four this time instead of two. All four ached from the force of what they had just been through, but were restless, ready to go out into this night as much as the man had held back from doing so.  
  
Around him, the sound of his fellows echoed through the cold air. Howling, snapping, the sound of hungry animals. The wolf raised its nose and sniffed hungrily, the wind carrying a smell which teased it sometimes – prey, humans, meat. It would not take long to trace it to the little cottage in the distance, its lights glowing.  
  
Behind him, the largest of them all snarled, demanding their attention, reigning the wolf in with its teeth on the back of his neck. Not maternal, just disciplining. Holding back the younger, eager ones to ensure the operation was smooth.

But these were beasts; beasts who had been trapped in human bodies for a month. Constrained by weaker sinews, uprightness and – in the case of this one – morality which was long lost from it now. Far from eager, it was hungry, _needy._ He snarled, teeth bared and ready to bite, jostling the other wolves. There was no hope of prey _there,_ but they were riled up, spiralling one another until there was to be an explosion of need.

They regrouped, forming a tight band as the trees at the edge of the field creaked and groaned under the brewing storm. Someone howled, muzzle tipped back, the light of the full moon illuminating the group of beasts as one by one, all heads tipped back and joined the sound, weaving a song which hailed things to come.

A little way in the distance, a family heard nothing through their thick glass, their stone walls and the roar of a fire which was keeping them warm. But the smoke coming through the chimney was a sign which bred ferality in all of them.

And so they ran. Faster than people, more random, yet more determined. This was what they _needed –_ the wolf could almost taste the blood, the need worsened by the fact it had been denied it for so long, and denied company altogether the previous night. Humans could win most nights, perhaps, but this would put a stop to it all.

It would rip at untouched flesh until blood spilt onto the floor, sink its claws into skin until it was as punctured as the human’s had been in its first contact with Greyback. Perhaps it would transform someone, make a new werewolf, widen their army. But at this rate, it seemed likely it would _kill._ Denied for so long… Tempted and yet never given… The little cottage was a paradise of living, breathing bodies for the wolves.

They did not take a long time to reach the cottage, running until they were in the field behind it. At this distance, they could see more than just the lights glinting; silhouettes moving behind curtains, settling down for the night. It was not late; the December sunset had been as early as it always was, but they were only children and would be in bed early. Greyback never failed to set himself up well for these things as a human.

_Prey._

The scent was overwhelming now, overpowering, the only obstacle the glass windows which separated them – and glass could be shattered easily. One pane, behind which two children lay still? They stood no chance. Not even wizards would…

And for all his resistance in human form, the wolf made no effort to shy away this time, snarling, moving forwards towards the building.

The cottage was set low; there was no need for it to be built with great protection, or so it had been thought. An animal large enough, with a great enough run and long enough hind legs could reach the upper floor window at a jump. It wouldn’t have stopped them had it not been the case, but it was certainly convenient.

Greyback jumped first.

The sound of the window smashing reached them just before the broken glass, but he had already jumped himself, hurtling after the larger wolf – teeth bared, hackles raised – there were two children, why should they not both have a claim?

Here, all sense of the man this wolf lived deep within was gone. The resistance, the love for his family, the terror of hurting anyone. Gone. He wanted to _rip,_ to bite, scratch, tear-

_Smash!_

The sound hailed the rest of the window breaking as three more joined the room, squeezed in, a pack of angry wolves as the little room groaned with the weight.

They had woken now, too, screaming in their beds, hiding and crying as Greyback leapt for the smaller and Remus – or perhaps the antithesis of him – for the larger figure. He could smell the blood in her veins… Could taste it in his mouth…

But-

The force against the wolf’s body was unexplainable. Pushing back far harder than a child could, pushing all of them back, away from the beds, as bright light surrounded them, pushing the beasts back. Further and further, further still until they were pushed through the window, away from the blinding light filling the little cottage.

And though determined, these beasts knew danger when it faced them like this. With their howls and snarls, their jaws snapped in anger as they hurtled back into the safety of the dark night.

The light did not stop shining until they were far from that place. Then it flickered, dimmed and died rather suddenly, the only sign of movement the curtains fluttering in the breeze the smash window no longer held back.

It was not until much later, almost morning, though, that Sirius Black and his cohort arrived, attempting to stop an incident which had failed to happen.

* * *

  
It was damp again.

It was damp on Remus’s head again but this time it was different- Wetter, somehow, but let yes noticeable. For starters, his hair was human hair again, soft and brown and dirtier than he would have wished.

But it was the least of his concerns right now.

The transformation back was usually welcomed; it was a return to a body he knew, one he longed for. But as he became more human this time, the realisation of what had happened – or what he remembered happening – dawned as though ice was being poured down his front.

Grounded by the pain and exhaustion, memories came back in droplets – the cottage, the window smashing, how close he had been to the child, the screaming-

This was it.

He had done it.

Greyback had broken him, finally. He had won. After years of resistance and resilience, after pushing against him for _so long,_ the man had finally found a way to destroy him. He had- He’d- Remus couldn’t admit to himself, couldn’t tell himself what he had done. But they were his family and now he was no better than Greyback himself. _Worse,_ even. He’d killed them. And not even spared a thought.

He _was_ a monster.

Human eyes looked down at shaking, bloody hands and he wanted to _scream._ It felt as though his insides were being pulled from him – yet he did not even deserve that emotion. Who deserved to _feel_ after this? He could meet with death and it would still be far less than he deserved. All those people who had trusted and loved him… He had coerced them into it.

Remus’s resolve had crumbled before he could even raise his eyes from the ground, but others had moved already. Beside him, Greyback was growling, picking himself up, his feet heavy on the ground.

Hatred burned through Remus. The sight of him – those teeth, the nails, his body which had only _ever_ been used to harm. Greyback could not love, he could not care, and he had not even _tried_ to do so. He himself was a monster, but he had at least tried… Whether that made him worse or better, though, would plague him for much time to come.

And when he looked back, it seemed Greyback was wearing the very same expression. He could not see why; the man had won. His family were _dead_ and there was nothing Remus would not do now to make sure Sirius did not end up in the same situation. Yet, for some reason, Greyback was still looking at him with an expression of pure disgust, the same as the time they had woken up after the full moon two months ago and he had nearly died then. This time, he had a little more help – a wand, for starters, and enough angry energy to kill the man.

“This- This was _you,”_ Greyback spat on the ground. Remus watched as the spit mingled with the already muddy ground, the same mud he was currently covered in. He did not dare to meet the man’s eyes, not just yet. It wasn’t fear so much now, though, but the knowledge that when he did, Greyback would face the worst attack. _He_ probably wouldn’t come out of it alive… But part of him didn’t care. It would be easier being dead than facing the guilt of what he had done.

But taunting him… Telling Remus it was _his_ fault. He’d tortured him enough already…

Slowly, jaw set, the man raised his face. He would have looked weak right now – underfed, covered in mud and naked. Greyback, meanwhile, seemed to be at full strength around the full moon. His muscles were bigger, the mud seemed to darken his skin tone evenly and the new injuries seemed to add to his strength. To an outsider, this would have looked like a fight between a lion and a mouse, but it was a long time coming and there was no avoiding it.

“It was _you.”_ He hissed. It wasn’t. It was him and he knew it, it was a fact which would plague him until the moment he died. But it also kind of _was._ “You- You-“

Remus was picking himself up slowly, legs shaking, exhausted. Adrenaline was the only thing carrying him in this moment, and there was not even enough for him to take in the rest of the field around them, or the slowly rising men beside Greyback.

“I _what?”_ He snarled.

Ten years of fear and hatred, of things he hadn’t been allowed to feel were rising up in Remus. For so long, he had not been allowed to cry or talk about it, to look the man in the eye and really consider the fact he had done _this._ Biting him was one thing, but returning to kill his parents? To finish off the job? That was more than what the rest of them did. It was sick. And the knowledge that he had been one of the _lucky_ ones… How many people had been killed simply for his amusement? How many parents had lost children? How many children were now orphans because of him killing their parents and stealing them away for this?

Out of all of the werewolves on the camp, Remus had to be one of the ones with the longest temper. Not that it was infinite, but one had to have a certain amount of self-restraint in order to be able to stand before the man who had ruined their existence every single day and not crack. But cracks were forming fast now – he felt like a dam in which a weakness had formed, a single crack, but one which was growing and growing until the whole thing splintered and fell apart, sending shards in every single direction until it was no more.

Greyback was pointing a wand at him, not for the first time, but Remus really focused on the thing itself now, eyes wide.

“That’s _mine,”_ he hissed, stepping forward, teeth gritted so tightly he thought they might just crack too.

How Greyback had held onto his wand all night was beyond him – Remus had no idea where his own was, but he did not care, because he would get this one back, the one which had belonged to _his_ father. Even if he was killed… Perhaps he would snap it, just so no other man could use it…

“I think _not,”_ Greyback laughed harshly, “I’m not afraid to use it, Lupin. And yet you were never brave enough to stand up to me. Perhaps if you’d asked earlier on, I would have let you,” he taunted. “But a werewolf _and_ a coward? You’ve amounted to nothing,” he sneered. “No world wants you now. Nobody wants you…”

It was true, he knew. And for the first time in a while, he found he could truly be honest with the man.

“Then kill me,” he whispered, teeth gritted, “just fucking _kill me._ Don’t you think you’ve tortured me enough? You took my parents, you took Ezra, now my family.”

“ _No.”_ Greyback stepped closer, still not touching Remus, but keeping his wand trained on him. He did not shake, though. For some reason, he felt no fear. Things could hardly get worse than this, not unless he knew about Sirius. “I’ve not finished with you, Lupin,” he growled, “or your family. I’ll stop,” he smiled evilly, “if you can join me. Not your shitty resistance, not _toleration._ If you love them so much, then turn someone. Bite another child. Follow my lead. Then I’ll leave your stupid family alone.”

He was asking Remus to trade lives he knew for ones he didn’t. For people who, like him, would be children sleeping peacefully in bed, whose fears up until this point were no bigger or more real than the bogeyman. They _both_ knew he could not do that.

“Kill me,” he said wearily. It would be easier than the guilt, than the resistance…

“No.”

Perhaps he could do it himself…

But then- Sirius. The Order. The memory of his parents…

He would be risking his life to do so, but perhaps there was a way out. If he could get his father’s wand back…

Remus was _exhausted._ The adrenaline was there, but so was the physical stress of full moon, the hatred, the hunger and tiredness. Greyback, who thrived on such things, was bound to win. His followers surrounded him and Remus had nobody. His only chance was in the small amount of magic he had learnt getting him out _if_ he could gain access to the weapon his enemy was holding…

“You don’t give up, do you?” Greyback snarled, “you little shit. Give in, Lupin. It’s easier. Nobody cares about _you,_ why should you give a shit about them? Forever mourning the parents who only kept you around out of guilt. They would have had you put down if you were still with them now, no more than a burden. Their pet.”

He wanted to reply. He wanted to scream that they had loved him and that Greyback had _never_ known love, but the words did not come. Now, of all times, tears had chosen to form behind his eyes, threatening to spill so he could only face _more_ humiliation… It would just go on and on and on until there was nothing left of him… Until it killed it if he had not sorted that for himself first.

And honestly? Not so long ago, he would have done it. He would have been found one morning by one of the others, dead, poisonous berries in his hand and a trickle of their blood-like juice on his lip. It would have been easy, _so_ easy. One bite and then nothing else, except for that sweet bliss of nothingness for eternity, the last bite would come with the knowledge that he could never hurt anyone again, that nobody would die in his name, that he had done his best and failed and was finally making some kind of peace with that.

But one short month had changed that. He’d seen so much and, above all, had felt something which he had not been permitted to for years. Hope had flickered inside him like a candle which was struggling to stay lit; but it did. However dark it still was, he knew how it felt to have lived better.

Sirius would not want him now, surely. But he could still work for the Order. He could live on his own in the woods. It would be very little… But the sun would still rise and still set and perhaps one day, long in the future, he could become something his parents did not despise.

“No,” he said quietly, “I don’t give up. Guess you didn’t consider that when you fucked up my life on several occasions.”

“Maybe I will kill you,” he said in a leisurely tone, “just not yet. I’d like to break you completely before I do. Destroy some of your little wizard ‘friends’ before that.”

The threat to Sirius’s life had an odd effect of raising strength in Remus, who felt the fire inside of him start to ignite.

“They’re better than you think,” he said fiercely, daring to step forwards. The wand jabbed into his chest, but that was how close he wanted it. “Better than _you.”_

Greyback laughed, his bloody teeth no longer a new sight to Remus, but still as disgusting, still rotting, his breath still putrid.

“I don’t _care_ about good, idiot. And look what it’s done for _you._ Don’t come boasting your moral high ground around me.”

He shook his head slowly. He was hardly worth anything, but at least _he_ did not kill children for fun, or ruin lives…

“You’re not still hooked up about that boy, are you?” He sneered, “Ezra? Or your stupid parents, who thought they had won against me?”

It was getting exhausting, the taunting. The endless jeering, the return of subjects which were both so tiresome and so raw, somehow. Remus breathed in slowly, deeply, tasting the air. For all he knew, with what he was about to do, this could be one of his last breaths… But he did not truly care…

“ _Fuck you!”_

The hit which reached Greyback was harder than he expected – and harder than the man himself had probably expected it to have been, for he grunted and crumbled a little, giving Remus a chance to seize the wand, to hold it in his hand and feel something more powerful rush through him.

It was not without consequence – Greyback yelled out, providing Remus with a kick far harder than his punch had been. He doubled over, but did not lose his grip on the wand.

“Greyback! Kill him!”

Several others ran forward, but the big man growled at them. “Turn back! He’s mine. I don’t need your help!”

Remus was on the floor again, and unsure why he had even bothered in the first place. Greyback was bigger, stronger and bound to beat him to shreds in seconds. Every second seemed to be a tumble between fiery strength and utter hopelessness.

The brief moment in which Greyback shouted at the others was long enough for him to pick himself up and dodge another blow, though only just. The wand was still well out of reach, taunting him from the larger man’s hand. He was not even using it, ever preferring to fight with fist and claw, but it was the symbolism which was enough for him, an object Remus was never allowed to touch, a symbol that he had beaten him a long, long time ago.

“You little shit…” Droplets of spit were forced onto Remus’s face as he ducked the blow; he was unhappy, that much was clear. Once, Remus might have backed down at this sign of anger, doing everything possible so as not to aggravate the man even more, but now he simply did not care. If he got Greyback riled up enough, perhaps the man would lose control and show a weakness he could take advantage of.

“You- You expect to hurt me like that and for me _not_ to retaliate?” Remus hissed, staring at him. “This was _always_ coming. You were _never_ excused for what you did and I’ve _never_ forgiven you…”

He laughed. He tipped his head back and laughed and did not yet realise the mistake he had made in doing so.

“You think this will _work?”_ He bellowed to the sound of raucous laughter escaping the others, before adding to it himself. It was taunting, mocking Remus, stirring him.

He reached out. He grabbed. And-

He _had_ it.

The realisation dawned on him only seconds before it did Greyback, but it was long enough to allow his grip to tighten. And with _actual_ magic, even if only the smallest amount, he suddenly felt a lot less threatened. What to do, where to go, they were the finer details. He had an out.

“ _You- Fuck!”_

But he had scrambled backwards, treading through the mud until he was far enough away to have the wand trained on Greyback this time. It liked him, somehow it _knew_ him; it felt so familiar in his hand it was as though it had noticed the change in user. Perhaps it had, it didn’t matter.

“This- This is _mine!”_

They were only sparks which flew out of the tip, but the others, who had never once held a wand since being here, backed away in trepidation. They might have supported Greyback, but at least some of it came only from him being the holder of the wand. Without it, they could all scramble to become leader of the pack.

Greyback hadn’t thought of that yet – he was running, running towards Remus with his teeth and fists ready and he _knew_ there was no time to be cocky yet. That was what had caused the larger man to lose it himself and Remus was not an idiot. But he could not outrun him- And with his level of magic, he couldn’t really outspell him-

Which left…

He’d never done it before. Apparently one had to pass a test to be allowed to do so, and even then it was difficult to manage it. But he had _experienced_ it countless times in the past month; he knew the feeling of being squeezed, of his chest being compressed and suddenly finding himself nauseous, but exactly where he needed to be. He could try it. It would be safer than this.

The only thing was, and he did not realise until he was turning on the spot to do so, wand gripped so tightly in his hand that his knuckles were white, he did not have anywhere to go any more.

He shouldn’t have done it. He really, really should not have done it. He had not only heard the cracking sound, but had felt it inside his own body, as though it was breaking down the middle. Whilst bodily transformations were nothing new, this was coupled with the panic that something was being left behind and the feeling that his lungs had been totally flattened, utterly devoid of air-

Remus had shaken off the nausea by now, but it was different when you did it yourself. Waves of sickness washed over him as ever atom of his body dematerialised and then seemed to attempt to put itself back in the exact same place as before. It was no smooth ride, not even for the experienced wizard.

By the time he landed, naked and muddy in a heap in what looked to be a corridor, Remus was not even sure what parts of his body were _left._ The adrenaline which had kept him going seemed to have rushed out of his veins like a river, replaced with the crushing weight that he had escaped from Greyback but would never, ever be able to escape from himself.

He’d _murdered_ them.

Suddenly the wand and the safety and the shelter seemed like a lie, like something someone else who was not him deserved. He deserved no better than for Greyback to drag him through hell after this.

He would just stay. Someone would find him and call the aurors on him. They would trace him back to the deaths of those two little children and the Ministry would deal with him as they saw fit… Maybe he would end up in prison, maybe he would somehow end up with Greyback again.

It did not matter.

Exhausted, he slumped against the wall of the strange corridor and closed his eyes, wishing that the sleep that washed over him would last forever.

 


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas!! Thank you so, so much for all the lovely comments <3

Trying to piece together what had happened in the few short hours of the previous night seemed as though it was going to be impossible for Sirius. At least until he found the final piece unconscious, lying in the corridor outside his flat, bloody and bruised but not as worse for wear as he had been on several other occasions. Not as bad as the last time he had encountered Greyback.

Lily spotted him first. She had turned the corner, exhausted and worried about James, before she had jumped several feet through the air and let out a cry which made Sirius sure there was a Death Eater standing right before the house.

The crop of light-brown hair had said differently, though. An odd mixture of relief and horror rushed over his body like a cold breeze.

“Remus- Shit, Remus?!”

The man did not stir, but he was breathing, each breath warm and shallow, as though there was something wrong, but he could not quite work out what yet.

“How did he get here?” Lily breathed. She had taken it upon herself to unlock the door and stand on the man’s other side, entirely ready to hoist Remus up and into the flat so they could check for damage.

It was a good point – he couldn’t have travelled with anyone who knew Sirius’s address without them still being there, or knowing. It couldn’t have been floo or a broomstick either. And he couldn’t have _walked,_ not like this. But…

“ _Jesus…”_ The redhead had lifted Remus’s neck to the side, ever so gently, but was wincing. “Sirius- I think he tried to apparate.”

In that moment, Sirius could not express the extent of his gratitude that he was with Lily Evans, of all people. She was unflappable as Sirius rushed to cup the pale cheeks in his hands as though the life might be seeping out of Remus in that instant.

It was her who grabbed the wand from his still hand, for it was easier to access than her own. And it was her who prodded and poked at Remus’s body, muttering about St Mungo’s, about how much she could do, about internal injuries and whether Remus might heal more quickly or slowly due to the fact he was a werewolf.

Beside her, Sirius fell to pieces.

It had been a month – less than, since he had seen the man. But they had both known how close it was to them never seeing one another again. And after tonight, Sirius was _sure_ he would not- With what had happened at his cousin’s house, it had seemed certain Greyback would blame it on the younger man and would try to kill him. _How_ he was here, more or less in one piece… He would perhaps never now.

“Inside, we need to get him inside before someone sees,” Lily was whispering to him, her breath warm on his ear. She looked exhausted, but they all were, in their different ways. She had a good point, though. He was naked and bleeding in a corridor and Sirius’s odd comings-and-goings already raised enough odd looks from the neighbours without this clear problem.

Unaware of himself, he helped the man up from the other side. He was rather shorter than Remus – so that it was difficult for the pair of them to walk him into the flat, but he did not stir, not even when they hauled him into his bed in the little red bedroom and Lily reached out hurriedly to cup his head to lay it down on the pillows, muttering about his neck.

It was only now that Sirius was so vividly aware that Remus was _alive._ Alive in his house, flesh and blood and mud. He was broken, inside and out. Broken beyond belief, some parts of which he would never be able to fix – like the scars on the outside, there were some that ran so deep in the man that even with all the time in the world he would never be able to separate himself from the trauma of them. But air was filling his lungs, raising his chest, bringing the faintest amount of colour to his cheeks, the tiniest twitches to his eyelids and that was _wonderful._

Lily ducked back a second; practical though she was, she was not unfamiliar with the need to give the pair of them space, even if all the space in the world would not really have fixed things for them.

His hands found the pale cheeks again, though, holding a face he could only pray would one day give him that crooked little smile. The face that one day, however long it took, would have less pain behind the eyes.

“I’ve got you…”

Remus didn’t respond, not in the slightest. But saying it to even only himself seemed to help. He was _here._ Away from Greyback’s clutches. There was a war outside the window and only a few short minutes ago, the spy who had sold them all out had been sitting several feet away in the living room. But he would not blame the man if he never ventured out again… He was safe, and he _deserved_ it.

“I’ve got you, Remus… I swear-“ His voice cracked, cracks which had threatened to form for a month now. Lily looked away, tactical, but she probably failed to miss the quiet, single sob and it was only because her head was turned that she did not see the tear.

“Sirius, I don’t think we can leave him waiting, he might need healing. I’m sorry…” She said, brushing a hand over his shoulder, “you don’t have to move, but he looks badly hurt. Really bad…”

Her gestures were to the scars on his body, though, and it hurt Sirius to have to tell her that those _were_ nothing new, that she could do little to heal them.

“I- If he apparated, he might be injured inside,” she said eventually. “I don’t think I _can._ He needs to see a healer, Sirius…”

For the first time since finding him, the spark flashed in Sirius’s eyes again, urgent and wary. “He can’t see a healer. I don’t trust them, Lily. They’ll know what he is… What if they try to poison him? Get him locked away?”

She said nothing, biting her own lip hard as Sirius took the opportunity to lay at blanket over his boyfriend’s messy frame, because it was nice to preserve him a little dignity, even if there was little left to retain.

“Dumbledore?” She tried eventually, but stopped as the look on Sirius’s face soured.

“I don’t know, Lily. He- He didn’t seem to care when Remus needed help before, however kind he’s _seemed_ to him, I doubt he won’t come if he’s not of some use to him.”

Lily looked as though she wished to argue this point, but knew far better than to start an argument with Sirius Black in a situation like this.

“Madam Pomfrey?” She asked desperately. She knew about the Order – many of the Hogwarts staff did, even if they were not official members, a move which was done to ensure their protection. But she _had_ helped heal several of their members after scrapes. She wasn’t devoid of sympathy.

“She doesn’t ask questions,” Lily prompted, something they all knew from experience with various spells and pranks at Hogwarts, “we can just tell her he apparated without knowing how and that he needs some help.”

Sirius did not want to invite more people into this private little room, to invade his peace and quiet and break the bubble of privacy Remus _needed._ He especially did not want people who were going to prod his boyfriend and ask questions and turn their nose up at his suffering. But the alternative was him not healing at all.

“He’s a werewolf, though,” he said quietly. It was a statement, rather than an argument – a hope that Lily would somehow come out with solid fact that the matron was the werewolf supporter of the month. “It’s different.”

“He’s hardly dangerous,” she said gently, “in the worst case, she’ll say no and we’re back here.”

Perhaps it was just her tone, perhaps it was the look on Remus’s tired face, but he gave in with a nod, consenting to the decision to have the Hogwarts matron in his spare room. It would not be easy. From what Remus had told him about his life, few people knew or cared about treating werewolves.

Lily touched him gently on the shoulder as she made her way towards the door of the bedroom.

“I’ll go. Stay here, watch his breathing, I’ll be quick.”

Sirius’s legs shook as he lowered himself onto the edge of the bed, sitting himself where he could run a hand through the man’s hair and keep a close eye on him. Just because he was safe, his nerves did not seem to dissipate. With Lily gone and most of his injuries likely internal, he didn’t feel as though he would be much use if Remus _did_ stop breathing. All he could do was hope and wait with him. It was better, after all, than if they hadn’t found the man in the corridor, which was something he tried rather hard not to think about. If his boyfriend had even only ended up one building away from this one, it would have been a very different case for them. Given he had never been trained to apparate before and could barely do _any_ magic, the amount of luck they’d now had was sure to run out soon.

“Sorry- Sorry that took so long. H-Hogwarts apparition rules, you know.”

Lily Evans had materialised back in the room without Sirius even noticing how much time had passed. His eyes had been fixed, totally, on the rising and falling chest, which had become mercifully steadier with time. As far as he was aware, no time could have passed at all – or hours could have done. She was bright red in the face and panting, though. He supposed she must have apparated to Hogsmeade and run up to the castle to fetch the matron, which was something he would have to thank her properly for later. Beside her stood the woman she’d gone to fetch, looking a little less flustered and already staring down at Remus.

“Who is he?”

“Part of the Order,” Sirius mumbled, shifting away rather reluctantly, “he apparated and had never done it before. Physically, he’s all here – just a cut on his neck – but we were worried about inside…”

“More than just a cut, Mr Black,” she wondered aloud, staring down at him. Sirius wanted to get some clothes on him or something, but the sensible part of him knew it was simply more important that Remus was healed than that his dignity was fully attended to right away. “He’s been through the mill. What on-“

She didn’t actually _ask,_ and from the look on her still pink face, Lily hadn’t explained, but Sirius thought it better that he tell the woman the truth.

“He’s a werewolf,” he told her bluntly, “it was a full moon last night.”

A look of understanding crossed the woman’s face, one carefully studied by the two other conscious individuals in the room, but there seemed to be no trace of disgust. Which was probably because she’d looked after thirteen year old boys who never showered too many times and a werewolf wasn’t really that bad. It seemed, even, to fade into sympathy for a second, though that did not stop her from poking at the man with her wand.

“I don’t know how much I can do for lots of his wounds then, I’m sorry… Werewolf scars and bites are very difficult to heal, even with experience. I’ll do my best for him.”

“It’s okay,” he smiled wryly. That was a reality he had confronted himself a couple of months ago, realising he could not heal Remus. “He knows that… I think partially he’s just tired from the full moon and recovering from that, but I don’t know what happened and we’re only assuming he’s not too harmed from his appearance and the fact he’s breathing.”

Pomfrey was waving her hands over him, muttering spells under her breath and apparently checking Remus for a lot more things than they had thought to do so. But her reaction seemed _fairly_ positive – which essentially meant he was going to live from this. As she worked, Lily excused herself from the room to make them all a drink and Sirius hovered, feeling rather useless and wishing he could help.

“Well?” He asked nervously.

“He looks to be exhausted,” she told him, “I’m not surprised, considering the full moon, but I imagine he’ll need quite a lot of rest. And he’s lost a lot of weight quite quickly, he’ll need to watch what he’s eating, get a good diet.” The woman glanced at Sirius, smiling ever so slightly as though she knew Sirius was eating little better than he had been. “How well do you know him? What does he do after a full moon?”

Though he had been reluctant to let her attend to him, it was now clear he had made the right decision, for she was doing far more than he know what to do and was treating Remus as gently as Sirius thought he needed, after a month of being pushed around by Greyback. The woman did raise her eyebrows several times, especially at some of the bite marks and newer bruises on his skin, but she didn’t ask any intrusive questions. Perhaps because she was scared to…

And as she treated him, Sirius found he was actually starting to relax, trusting that she would not harm him (what reason would there be to when she seemed unconcerned about his condition?). By the time Lily had returned to the room with cups of tea for all of them and had wound an arm around Sirius’s shoulder to whisper in his ear the latest updates from the Order, he ended up slumping against her with a yawn. She was always there for him – not just her, even. Somewhere outside of the house, James had been sitting through the night and contacting Order members so that Sirius could run after his boyfriend too. Without the two of them… He was not sure where he would be, but it wouldn’t have been a pleasant place.

“You wanna sleep?” Lily suggested, glancing in the direction of his bedroom. Sirius was saw she’d _seen_ how tired he looked but had been too sensible to go about commenting on it when they were in the middle of fighting a battle. Now, though, it was clear that Remus would be doing the same for a while and his family were safe – which would involve some explanation for Remus when he woke.

He sighed.

“I should. I know I should.” That was a step in the right direction already. “But I don’t think I can. I need to process, there’s so much to think about and the minute my head hits the pillow, I know I’ll end up thinking about how this night could have gone if we hadn’t all been so lucky.”

Madam Pomfrey seemed to be able to work through their conversation without a problem. When Sirius’s voice dipped with a trace of weakness, the woman had noisily conjured up some water to clean the blood from Remus’s neck, ensuring she did not feel tempted to listen in on it.

Lily chewed her lip for about a second before, as always, an idea came to her.

“If I move one of the armchairs in the living room in here and then you could at least doze in that without leaving him?”

He nodded, too tired to weigh up the pros and cons of the idea, too worried. When did they all get so _old?_

It was then that the matron turned to him with a look of concern.

“This is all I can do for now, I’m afraid. Those scars just aren’t going to heal, probably ever.”

“But he’ll be okay otherwise?”

“As long as he’s well rested and well fed, he should be fine. He just needs to make sure he’s not worn out and battered again by the time the next full moon comes. If he is, then each blow will just become bigger and bigger until there will be one he _can’t_ face.”

From the look of what Remus had gone through tonight, there was nothing he couldn’t face, but he knew what she meant. And he would be making sure of it – no more stupid suicide missions with Greyback, no more bending over backwards for Dumbledore when half of the Order also thought it ridiculous. Thankfully, there being no more Peter Pettigrew would hopefully put some kind of a stop to that.

“I’d like to speak to him when he wakes, to see if he needs any other kind of potions and to ask how he’s feeling. You can send a message to the fireplace in my office once he’s awake, and I advise you do it fairly quickly.”

He wouldn’t like _that._ Talking to a stranger, being prodded and poked in person, but he supposed that was Remus’s decision to make – he might be willing if he knew how much better it would make him feel.

“I’ll pass on the message. Thank you… For coming. And for not turning away in light of, you know…”

For the first time since she arrived, Madam Pomfrey smiled, though there was a sadness to it.

“I just don’t want to see us lose this war, Mr Black. Every life is important, every person worth treating, is that not the case?”

When she left, Sirius felt as though someone had thrown a brick at his chest and squashed all of the air from his lungs until he could not even inflate them. Falling into the chair Lily had brought in, he could focus only on the rising and falling chest of Remus Lupin and swear to himself that, as far as he could control, this man would come to no more harm again. He had been through enough.

* * *

  
  
Morning dawned in a series of movements, not one fell swoop. Each second, he took in a little more, gathering together the pieces of what had happened.

He was sore, but less so than usual, as though someone had started the healing process for him. Right now, it was unclear who, but it helped clear his mind. The new cuts and bruises seemed to have healed a little faster than most months, and something had surely been injected into his muscles, for they were not screaming out as they so often did.

But that did not explain the creeping sense of dread, the one where you knew something was not right but it took several moments to locate exactly what the problem was.

The moon, the moon…

Greyback seizing Remus by the arm and pulling him by portkey, Greyback punching him to the ground. The little cottage with the lights and the screams of the children facing the wolf who only wanted to _hurt-_

He shot up, so fast that he felt as though it had been winded, but it did not matter. None of it mattered, not when they were his family and he had- He had-

The next moment brought a surge of panic and shame more than Remus had ever felt before, but it was not even worth it. There was no _undoing_ the hurt caused to these children. He was a monster. He deserved to be back with Greyback. No, he deserved Azkaban and people steering away from him and being spat at on the streets by strangers. There was no forgiveness for _this._

_And someone was treating him?_

This wasn’t prison. There were no bars, light was flooding in through soft red curtains and he knew that these people were mistaken. They hadn’t realised what he had done or the danger they were all putting themselves in by being around him, and instead they were trying to make him _better?_

His legs were still too shaky to walk, but that didn’t stop him from making a valiant attempt to slide out from under the covers. He would have to run, and his body would have to put up with it until he was far, far from here. Perhaps he should turn himself in… It was that or risking facing the remains of the family he had killed. _His family._ It made him sick. _He_ made himself sick – the white-faced, exhausted looking man in the mirror was far more than that, it was a monster, a monster who was so targeted that it _sought out_ its own family, only to kill two young children in a fit of animalistic selfishness.

It felt as though somebody had wrapped something around his neck and was pulling harder and harder, tightening until the air in his lungs was all squeezed out and he was torn between staying frozen to the spot in horror or starting to run, and never stopping.

He needed to be out. Out of this comfort, out of this house, out of his own body because he was a _monster_ and this was a trick when it suggested otherwise. People needed to know what he was, they needed to be able to avoid him. He needed to return to the rags and dirt and squalor, to warn others, to punish himself for what he had done to them.

Somehow, he had made it to the door. His hand was on the handle, shaking as though he did not know his own strength any more, as though he was scared it might combust but fully aware that it would be _his_ fault if that happened. But then-

“Remus?!”

He started, terrified. Remus had not even noticed the presence of another person in the room, but it was not a surprise when he was a monster. Sirius Black was looking up at him from a chair, groggy and pale and scared.

Remus allowed himself a fraction of a second to meet his grey eyes, but it was long enough to notice there was not a trace of disgust there. He didn’t know. He would have to leave this place now and in a couple of days, Sirius would surely find out that his ex-boyfriend was a cruel, sick monster.

“I’m sorry…”

His stomach churned and lurched and he tried hard not to think about the contents, but that did nothing – a retch, a struggle with the door handle and a fall to his knees. He vomited all over the carpeted floor, eyes closed, body trembling.

Behind him, the hands of Sirius Black brushed back his outgrown hair, keeping it from his mess of a face, one hand slowly moving to rub his back steadily as the half-blood struggled to find the words to say to him.

“Y-You don’t understand. I h-have to go.”

He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand; it was no more disgusting than he was, and struggled to his feet.

“I _do_ understand.”

There was a new edge to Sirius’s voice, one which seemed both firm and soft, as though he was trying to reassure Remus things were okay, but it took a lot of force.

“Y-You don’t,” he struggled against the grip on his shoulders, but Sirius simply waved hiss wand to lock the door of the room the moment he wriggled free. “L-Let me out! I’m not _safe!”_

There was a new wildness to his eyes, the look of a man who needed to escape, but would not be able to escape from himself wherever he went. Sirius was still giving him that very odd look – was it pity? Sympathy?

“Remus, you can leave if you want to. I’ll let you leave, but I need you to listen to me first.”

Sirius didn’t understand that there wasn’t _time._ How long before he did something like this again, but Sirius was the victim? He couldn’t hurt him. Not any more, not one more person. He’d sooner die.

“No. _No.”_ He rattled the door handle, but even his strength could not hold up against actual magic and he didn’t deserve to use that now, not after all that he had done. “You don’t know- I- Last night-” Tears threatened to spill, but he didn’t _get_ to mourn this time, not when it had been him.

“Your cousins?” Sirius said sharply, moving to stand in front of the door, again without a trace of fear at Remus. How could he be so _foolish?_ How could he not realise the _danger_ he was in?! “They’re safe, Remus.”

Was this some kind of _joke?_ A cruel prank? Would Sirius open the door and watch as Remus was dragged away by dementors. He deserved nothing less, but it was causing the panic to rise so fast that he seemed to be drowning for it, unable to fight the rising tide.

“ _You didn’t manage to attack them last night.”_

He stared. He had _memories_ of it… Of standing in that bedroom and the screaming and the broken glass and the bright light-

That was where it all went fuzzy, but he could guess how the rest of it went. The Order hadn’t made it in time to stop them, because their spy had betrayed them.

For a moment, confusion took over the fear; he tried to wrap his head around something he could not, to work out what Sirius meant-

“The Order weren’t-“

“No,” Sirius said softly. It was _now_ that his expression became more fearful, though not because of Remus. “I- We- It was so close- Remus, you need to sit down.”

Remus’s legs had been threatening to buckle under him on the spot, which was covered with the insides of his stomach. The pureblood’s gentle push led him to the edge of the bed, where he sat, shaking, in a pair of pyjamas that he shouldn’t have been allowed to have.

“Your cousins weren’t attacked, Remus. They’re alive and safe.”

He was hearing the words but they _didn’t make sense._ Sirius seemed to be trying to work out his reaction before he moved on, as though still worried about this story.

“We didn’t make it, the Order. Not in time, but…”

But _what?_ The only hope had been in the Order. Nobody else could stop a werewolf (even they couldn’t).

“I’m sorry we couldn’t, Remus. I’m so sorry, you have no idea… You got lucky, incredibly so.”

The story still didn’t make sense, but he dared to glance at Sirius with confused, wide eyes. Had some stranger who also happened to be the most esteemed werewolf hunter of all time been staying over that night?

“Your cousin, the little girl…” Sirius’s voice sounded heavy, “Browyn?”

He nodded.

“She’s a witch. She’s a witch and her _first_ sign of underage magic came out because she was so threatened. The light was her and there was a blow which pushed you back. She didn’t actually attack you at all, but it unnerved all of the wolves. It was a stress reaction from her, because underage magic is often strongest at those times, but it saved both her and her brother.”

“I-“

And then, before he could help it, there _were_ tears on Remus’s face, flooding into his lap, spilling down as his body gave up and started to shake. They were alive – they were _alive._ And though he could doubtless never see them again, or ever look at himself without disgust, they were _alive_ through a sheer act of _luck._ The universe, he knew well, was not smiling down on him but it had smiled down upon them when most needed and _they were alive._

And it broke him.

Sirius wrapped an arm around him and he found he lacked the energy to break free this time, taking great, shaking breaths, gulps of air. It still hurt, but it felt like he could breathe again…

“They’re safe, Re. Totally safe,” Sirius was mumbling into his hair, “and your cousin is like you…”

It took a moment to realise he meant she was _magic_ and not a werewolf, but he cocked his head up slowly and shook it.

“I can’t e-ever see them,” he whispered, “it was l-luck.”

Sirius bit his lip. “They… They’ve had their memories wiped. They called the Muggle police after the attack and the Ministry have people inside it, who realised it was more than just a burglar and modified all their memories. They… They don’t know a thing.” He whispered. “I don’t know if that was the right thing to do, but they beat us there.”

Remus didn’t know if it was a good thing either. They needed to know he wasn’t safe, that he was a monster – but he would have given anything if it meant his cousins did not have to suffer the trauma and nightmares he had been enduring since the age of four. It was not really his decision, though.

“We didn’t arrive until morning,” Sirius said quietly, “we- I found the spy.”

His eyebrows shot up, because _this_ was important. His cousins could be moved on to more safety by the Order (it was easy to fake a letter from a landlord saying the property wasn’t safe and they would be placed somewhere else) and there would be no inside man giving away this information.

“ _Who?”_

“Pettigrew,” he sighed, “we underestimated him, we all did, thinking that someone was working to help him… He didn’t _need_ the help.” Bitterness filled Sirius’s tone, a tone far worse than any he had used when speaking to Remus, which was odd to hear. “He was an animagus, Remus – he could turn into an animal, a rat, at will. So he spent every meeting, every whispered conversation hidden in the walls… Then he would spill information at a rate which kept him useful to Voldemort.”

Sirius sighed this time, shaky and worn out, and Remus realised he was not the only one who felt out of depth and guilty, not suitable for this duty…

“You couldn’t have known,” he told him quietly, soaking up the bitterness the pureblood had used only moments ago. “Nobody could. And-” Remus shuddered. These were words he could not accept himself. “They were safe. What _could_ have happened didn’t, so…”

Sirius raised an eyebrow and nodded at Remus, as though trying to remind him of this fact himself. It would take a lot more than that, though…

“That was different,” he whispered, lips barely moving. “You’re not Peter yourself, you’re not the monster. I- I am.”

“You’re not. But you do need to rest and eat and- Well, there’s someone who I think you should see. She’s the Hogwarts matron, she helped to heal you because-”

“What?!” Remus’s voice was soft, but he seemed to be torn between alarm and anger. “She- What?!”

“She knows about you and she’s fine with it. You _needed_ healing, Remus, and I could have hurt you more.”

“You don’t- I’m not _safe.”_

“Go on then,” Sirius said, a little shorter than usual, “hurt me, hurt me now.”

Remus looked broken, staring down at himself. It was the look of a man who could not bring himself _to_ hurt someone, rather than having to restrain himself _from_ him. But…

“It’s not like that.”

“You’re just going to have to get used to the fact that _do_ feel safe around you, Remus. That I do want you here and that I _don’t_ think you’re a monster in the slightest.”

Sirius Black was an idiot, that was for sure. But he was an idiot that allowed the tiniest bubble of warmth to form in Remus’s heart. He felt guilty for letting himself lie back down on the bed and accept these things he didn’t deserve, but then, it wouldn’t be fair for him to argue with Sirius when he owed that man so much… Besides, the pillows were so soft, his body so sore…

“My neck,” he mumbled, trying to turn his head and finding a sharp pain shooting through his body.

Sirius gently moved his wandering hand away from where it hovered over the cut, pushing it away. “You apparated, we assume. And you did a bloody good job of it considering you’ve never done it before and it could have killed you. That was from this, but it’ll heal.”

He nodded. A new scar wasn’t really anything big, not when he gained a nice collection of them every month.

“Which- Well, I can tell you everything that happened regarding Peter and a lot of what happened about your cousins and the attack, but what about at your end? You don’t have to talk now,” he added hastily, “whenever you’re ready. But it’s probably good to know at some point.”

Remus licked his lips, mouth dry and hands still trembling. “Greyback found out about us blocking the portkeys only a few hours before the full moon. He knocked me out and next thing I knew, I was in the field and about to transform and- I-“ He rubbed his face, where there were still traces of tears, “I realised where we were but it was t-too late…”

Sirius held up a hand, offering him a chance to stop as he shifted to sit beside Remus on the bed, running the tips of his fingers through his hair in a comforting manner.

“Afterwards,” he swallowed heavily, “when I thought- I fought Greyback, I wanted him dead or to be dead… I suppose now he was angry because he realised it hadn’t worked, but I thought it _had_ and- I took the wand and apparated because I couldn’t run and-”

“You ended up just outside the house with that wand, covered in injuries but alive and intact,” he finished quietly, “Lily and I found you, I’m not sure how much later that was.”

“Thank you.”

That made Sirius _smile,_ actually smile down at him and shake his head like Remus had said something utterly ridiculous.

“You don’t need to thank me.” Remus’s incredulous look brought an addition to his answer. “Fine, you can thank me, but could you please do it in the way of letting Madam Pomfrey come and take a look at you? I can be in the room or disappear, but she wants to check that you’re not too badly hurt in a way she hasn’t been able to notice. I know it’s big, but she- Well, she doesn’t want to hurt you, she’s a good person, she’s involved with the Order.”

Sirius had asked Remus to trust people before, and through it rattled him, he was never really _wrong_ about it. All those people had been kind to him, or wanted to help. He sighed softly and nodded. “Okay… Alright. I will be okay, though.”

“I know. But it’s even better when a professional says it.”

He got up, planting a kiss on the top of Remus’s head which stunned him for just a moment. Remus had not _forgotten_ about what was between them, and nor had he stopped feeling that way, but it was certainly _odd._

“I’ll contact her now, and then I can make you some food?”

Sirius’s words seemed not to be going in entirely, but he nodded, not really hungry but a bit too tired  to put up much of a fight. Now that his cousins were alive, things were different, but still so complicated. He had only not hurt them out of sheer luck and a discovery they had not noticed before, but everyone would treat him differently as a result. They seemed to be telling him it was not his fault, that he was okay and deserved healing. Had he not been so lucky, people would have been less sympathetic and would be reacting _very_ differently to this. Did he deserve to get such good treatment off the back of luck? Not really. But that was something it would be easier to talk to Sirius about when he was not pretty much restricted to a bed.

For now, he supposed, he could just lie back and feel the relief that somehow, nobody had died the previous night.

The sight of Madam Pomfrey attending to Remus once again was making Sirius feel as though his worlds were colliding. It wasn’t in a bad way. Rather, it was reassuring to know someone else, someone who did not even know the man cared about him enough to heal him. Though it was daunting for Remus, too, it was good to see that even he could cope with this, even after another month of living among the werewolves and being very far from any gentle human contact in that time.

As she tended to him in the pyjamas he was wearing, the sight was almost endearing – it would have been if it was a little less traumatic from all the injuries. He seemed to be very unused to have someone fuss over him, which brought out a shy, polite and somewhat bewildered side of Remus which made Sirius feel like he was melting inside.

“How’s your neck feeling? Is it sore?” She asked, leaning to look Remus in the eye as though doing so to ensure he could not lie to her.

“I-“ He looked like a baby dear, Sirius thought, his big brown eyes slightly alarmed that a stranger gave so much of a damn about him. “It’s fine, thanks. Sore, but it’s okay…”

Madam Pomfrey frowned and made a ‘hmm’ sound, pressing a hand to Remus’s forehead for several long seconds. Once again, he seemed a little surprised at the action, but Sirius was pleased to see that he did not flinch at all.

“You need to start eating more, I think,” she told him, “gaining more weight… I can send some potions to help with that.”

Sirius snorted, the sound filling the room. He wasn’t going to force Remus to take a load of random potions if he had a choice. “What about chocolate? Can’t he just have some chocolate?” He raised an eyebrow, “that’ll help him put on weight.”

At the mention of the word alone, Remus’s eyes seemed to widen. He looked more happy than he had done ever since Sirius had told him that his cousins had survived. She seemed to take it on board.

“Yes, alright. If you actually eat it… If you don’t have an appetite, we’ll have to resort to potions, though. You’ll need to be eating just to get your energy back.”

“I can eat it,” he piped up, catching Sirius’s eye. Sirius grinned – the Remus Lupin that deserved to be out in the open was still in there somewhere, however buried, pining for some chocolate. He was going to buy that man literal bucketloads of chocolate as a result of this. Remus Lupin might be housebound for some time, but he would walk into the living room tomorrow morning to find that he couldn’t move for boxes of chocolate. He had to use his corrupt family’s money _somehow,_ so…

“I’ll get you some, whatever you want,” he promised him, wishing he could hold Remus’s hand but knowing it would both get in the way and raise questions when the half-blood was clearly trying to evade them. He looked uncomfortable enough at having the woman raise his shirt, frown at his scars and listen to the rate of his heart. Sirius had a slightly different reaction to his chest, but that was something he would be saving for another day, and not one where Madam Pomfrey was in the room either…

She actually took less time looking at Remus than Sirius had expected, before asking Sirius to leave the room (on Remus’s permission) to talk to him in private. He had found his boyfriend’s eye and seen him nod, smiling ever so slightly as though to assure Sirius he could handle this. A little too curious about what this conversation was, he skulked out of the room to make a cup of tea and returned only when she was saying goodbye, facing Remus with an expression of curiosity that it was probably difficult for the man _not_ to satisfy it.

“It’s fine,” he said through a yawn, “she wanted to talk to me about confidentiality with my… She called it my ‘condition’,” he seemed to be torn between amusement and disbelief, “and help and stuff the next few months.”

“Oh?” He sat on the edge of the bed, wondering if that was a bad thing for Remus. It didn’t seem to be, but he wasn’t sure…

Remus fiddled with his sleeve for a moment, until Sirius rested a hand on his arm to calm him. “It’s just weird,” he glanced at his lap. “I don’t know…”

It hurt that it was _bizarre_ to Remus that a stranger cared for him, but Sirius knew that feeling only too well. The first time Mrs Potter had taken him into her arms, quite literally, he had not known how to react. It took some getting used to, especially when coming from something so totally different.

“Do you feel you can trust her?”

He nodded.

“You’ve got a month, I guess,” he pointed out, “to decide if you want her to help or not. You don’t have to decide for forever even by then. Besides, you’ve got so much going on right now… Get some sleep if you need to, Re.”

Remus certainly _looked_ as though he needed sleep, and Sirius felt similar himself. He’d been so stressed, so tired for so long and had not really realised just how much he had missed Remus until just now. The man seemed to smile slightly, nodding.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, “there’s so much, this is all so much.”

Unable to help himself, Sirius laughed a little, gently rubbing Remus’s shoulder to assure the man it was not _at_ him. Rather, it was a laugh directed at just how accurate that point was.

“Christ, I know. It’s not even me, but I know. Madam Pomfrey told you to rest, right? So you can rest up, have some food, have a chance to relax and work through things. And,” he grinned, looking suddenly quite excited, “there’s something else important around the corner…”

“Huh?” Remus’s brows were furrowed.

Sirius glanced out of the window at almost exactly the right moment; a snowflake had started to swirl down against the deep blue sky, signalling things to come.

“Christmas!”

“ _Oh.”_ His eyes were wide in such a way that it was rather endearing. Sirius supposed that he’d not really celebrated Christmas properly since the age of seven or eight, which meant he had probably forgotten the words to carols and had not received a gift for a miserable amount of time. He would make sure to fill him with so much turkey that it made up for all the Christmases he had missed…

“We can decorate the tree together!”

It was all very _domestic,_ but it was nice to pretend together sometimes, to act as though things were going to be okay (or just to hide inside from the storm for a few hours). With Remus and Sirius, things would move at a weird speed because of their weird situation, but they made one another happy, so what was the issue?

“Sure,” he said softly, sinking back into the pillows with a sigh, “I have no idea how to do that, but… Yeah.”

Sirius wanted very much to climb into the bed beside Remus, wrap his arms around the man and cuddle him into a deep sleep until it was time for them to do just that, but he wouldn’t be able to take much time away from doing things for the Order himself and would likely have to leave his boyfriend to his own devices. Instead, he settled for pressing a soft kiss to his cheek and smiling rather tiredly. The response it elicited from Remus, though, was rather unexpected.

“Sirius?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we still- Together?”

He blinked; there had not been a shadow of a doubt on _his_ part about that. True, Remus had spent the past month in conditions which probably made him feel like he wasn’t a person, but Sirius felt as though his feelings had only grown, not subsided.

“Well- Yeah. Why wouldn’t we be?”

Remus glanced at his lap and Sirius understood immediately; he was playing with hypotheticals again, a dangerous game, but one people all played at some point or another in their lives.

“After what happened-“

“ _Nearly_ happened.”

He heard the briefest of sighs escape Remus as he continued. “I would understand if you wanted us not to go on…”

“Listen,” Sirius told him, though he was careful not to be too firm, lest it be mistaken as aggression or a threat. “I asked you on a date fully _knowing_ what can happen at full moons. You can’t control it, and I’m still into you. Early days, but I’m still invested. If you’re no longer interested in me, then just say. I promise it won’t be awkward.”

The two pink spots which appeared on Remus’s cheeks were a positive sign. The man was quite sheepish as he played with the bedsheets, smiling rather coyly. “I’m definitely still interested.”

Rather selfishly, Sirius’s heart fluttered. He hadn’t wanted to make it about him, but it was a relief to know Remus was still interested in him. Christmas would have been slightly lonely or weird otherwise… Maybe he would have gone to spend it with his family.

“Good,” he grinned, “when you’re a bit better, we’ll get back into that dating thing, just you wait.”

Sirius made to leave the room, but Remus caught him on the arm just a second before he was too far away, pulling him back into a kiss, but this one was on the lips. Tender, sweet. He’d missed it _so_ much.

“Goodnight.”

There was a slight, lopsided smile on Remus’s face. It was the last thing Sirius saw before he clicked the door shut. And it was the most wonderful sight in the world.

* * *

 

By the time Remus woke up and managed to lift himself from the bed to use the bathroom, a thick layer of snow had fallen on the street below and the lights of the more festive members of the community twinkled from the windows. Remus was fairly used to snow, but only in a context where it was a problem. People could _die_ if they were outside in this much snow. Most of winter was spent trying to make fires. Here, though, Sirius had turned all the radiators up and had bought him some slippers to keep his feet warm. Remus padded from the bathroom to the kitchen, wanting to wish the man a good morning, even if he did plan to get some extra rest in before too long.

He found Sirius in the kitchen, humming along to the radio, his head stuck in the fridge as though he either could not decide what to eat or seriously wanted to catch a chill. When he had moved around him, Remus noticed that there _was_ no food in there, save a couple of smaller items.

“Hi…”

The pureblood grinned and whirled around, pressing a kiss to Remus’s forehead as a greeting. “Hello!”

Remus only realised it was not a threat in time – he swayed on the spot awkwardly, a man who had almost ducked from what was a sweet and thoughtful gesture. Sirius seemed unruffled, though.

“How are you feeling?”

Truth be told, Remus didn’t really know how he should be feeling. So much had happened, the feelings did not seem to match. Thanks to the work of Madam Pomfrey, he felt much better than he usually did at this point after the full moon, whilst emotionally… In spite of those feelings that had plagued him the other night, right now he felt fine. Not extremely happy or extremely sad. Just… As though he was still processing, as though this was a dreamland and he would not bother expressing feelings yet, just in case it turned out not to be real and a waste  of time. That was a lot to explain to Sirius right now, though.

“Fine, thanks,” he said, smile slightly tighter than normal. “How are you?”

Sirius, it transpired, had used his morning to gather together everything in the house which could be used as a Christmas decoration, including stockings and lots of glitter.

“I want our Yuletide to be merry _and_ gay,” he had told Remus, with the kind of shit-eating grin which was proof he had spent all morning working on that joke. Much to Sirius’s delight, Remus had laughed quietly and suggested they put the stockings over the fireplace. He wasn’t expecting them to contain gifts at any point, but it was pleasant to see them. His last sight of Christmas decorations had been in houses they broke into, which only really inspired a festive sense of guilt in him.

Sirius, insisting that Remus was not overtired or overworked, made sure he took a seat in an armchair as he carried on decorating. Knees pulled up and hugged to his chest, he was happy to sit in silence – but Sirius had some questions.

“Do you have any Christmas traditions you like to do? Any little Lupin things I should take into account?”

He was arranging glitter carefully around the fireplace (it would still make a mess, Remus thought), but had sat back on his knees to ask the question, which merited a delayed response. It was sweet to ask, but he couldn’t really remember much about Christmas with his parents, just bits and pieces, as though they were glimpses through a window. He could recall being taken to a church as a very young child, scuffing his toes on the stone floor in the chilly building as he tried not to think too hard about the Christmas dinner waiting when they got home – the old ladies would give him sweets or  chocolate and wish him a Merry Christmas, but Remus somehow felt he wasn’t suddenly going to be interested in going to church on Christmas now he was fully grown… They probably didn’t like wizards, either. And they doubtless would dislike the earring that Sirius often wore in his ear, or the fact he had a boyfriend. Other than that, things had been special or traditional because they were things they did as a _family,_ and that part of the family was one he would never be able to have back. Whether he had a roast dinner at lunch or in the evening didn’t matter; he was fortunate to be getting one at all…

“Not really,” the half-blood smiled apologetically, but Sirius did not seem too concerned about it, “is there anything you always do?”

There were probably all sorts of traditions involving alcohol that he had never reached the age to try before being taken into a life where Christmas didn’t really exist. In fact, he was fairly sure that a couple of years ago, Christmas day itself had been a full moon. Had Greyback realised, he might have made some kind of crude joke about having a feast, but they had no calendars with them and hadn’t exactly stopped to admire the decorations when in the form of a wolf.

Beside him, Sirius was laughing, the sound of a man whose own Christmases for a long time had not exactly been peaceful and idyllic either.

“With my family? Definitely not. Christmas with them was so _stuffy._ My presents were just to show off to the rest of the family how rich we were and I never got anything I actually _wanted._ Just boring things. Dinner was the same, stuffy and boring. I think the adults had alcohol later, but we were pushed off and left to taunt one another instead,” he smiled grimly. “No traditions until I was at Hogwarts and had Christmas there.”

“Oh yeah?”

Remus could not imagine spending Christmas at _school,_ but he imagined it was likely not to be any worse than what Sirius had experienced at home.

“It was great, Remus,” he grinned, _now_ showing the roots of the childlike excitement which had caused him to sprinkle glitter all over his flat. “The food, the stuff we did, there was always so much _snow.”_

He found he was envious, but in an odd way. Not of the things he’d done, just of the apparent joy and peace Sirius had taken from it… _He_ wanted to feel that way too. It was selfish, maybe, because he’d caused others so much stress and pain. But he _did._

“It’s gonna be good this year, we’ll make it good. Nothing huge, no pressure, but good.”

“Quiet, yeah?”

He cocked his head up, hoping Sirius wasn’t planning some last-minute drinking event. If he _was,_ then he could just stay in his room when it got too much…

“Just the two of us, if that’s all you want.” He picked himself up, walking around to sit on the arm of Remus’s chair, all denim and leather and overpriced cologne.

Tentatively, he leaned his head into Sirius’s side, enjoying the warmth when he put an arm around his size and squeezed gently. Seconds later, the pureblood was peppering his hair with kisses, too, which only served to remind Remus that he really needed to wash…

“I think so.” If his family reached out to him, he wasn’t sure he would be safe to be around them. Their memories had been wiped, but Remus did not think he could look his young cousins in the eye ever again after what he had come so close to doing. “Unless… Well, you’ve mentioned your brother,” he said curiously, poking a little. Sirius had asked him plenty of questions about his own family, so it didn’t feel too bad to be doing the same. “Are things between you so bad that you don’t want to see him?”

A look of something between sadness and bitterness fell across Sirius’s face and he shifted a little, so that he could bury his own face in Remus’s hair, but did not refuse to talk.

“It’s complicated. Well, it’s not even that. But I think I’m too hopeful.”

“There’s always _hope,”_ Remus reminded him, a lesson he’d been taught by Sirius himself, “what- Well, what happened with him and you, if I’m okay to ask?”

“I knew this was coming at some point,” his boyfriend admitted, straightening up. They’d spoken about it before, but Remus wanted to know the whole story from the beginning, and where Regulus was now. “My family, as you know, were pretty awful from the start. They loved me only because I was an heir to them and their legacy and Regulus only because he was the ‘spare’ and was slightly more appropriate as an heir. We were born into their politics and only really a part of it.”

Remus nodded; it was worlds away from what he had known as a child, where politics had not been a part of anything, but it sounded terrible.

“I wasn’t perfect for it. My parents didn’t want what they referred to as some ‘stuck-up, nancy boy’ who sucked up to them. They wanted something like a business partnership… I think my parents would have been impressed about being stood up to if it was about certain ways, it would show they hadn’t raised a passive child. But I stood up to them about the wrong things. Of course, _they_ thought Slytherin and Hogwarts and my cousins and family surrounding me would knock me back into shape. With the right kind of ideas put into my head, I would start to realise that I should work _with_ my parents and oppose things like Muggleborns and all sorts of people. Of course,” he grinned, “I messed that up by being put into Gryffindor.”

“Safe to say, my parents were not impressed about me being put into Gryffindor. They asked if there was a way that I could be re-sorted, suggested I learnt at home instead. They even tried to find families with pureblood children in Gryffindor who had similar views to me, whatever year they were in, to take me under their wing. But, unluckily for them, people were tolerant of Muggleborns at the very least and most people did not see themselves as any better than others. So,” he sighed, “I think they started to give up. Kept me on the back-burner, but took one look at Regulus, who had already soaked up quite a few of my ideas and attitudes, though he was a little more reserved than I was, mainly because he could not ever get a word in edgeways, and decided to work on him instead.”

“Out of fear that he would end up on the same path as me, they almost didn’t let him go to Hogwarts. Keeping him at home meant that they could control just who he spoke to and what he thought, but that was an awful lot of effort for them and it was a good way for him to network and get a leg up in the Ministry, so he went in the end. He was under a _lot_ of pressure to get into Slytherin,” Sirius sighed, “and he did. I don’t know if that was lucky for him or not. It saved his guts, but put him on the wrong path.”

Remus could not imagine having parents who cared only about their children continuing their crazy and horrible ideas, who threatened not to send their second son to school in case he ended up like the first and, of course, treating the first as a lost cause entirely. Of course, he could not remember his own all too greatly, but there was no doubt that they had loved him a great deal more than the Blacks had ever loved their sons.

“As boys, we got on fairly well. He was a bit too good for my liking, but he seemed to enjoy spending time with me. During his first year at Hogwarts, I tried just as hard as my parents to show him that there was more to life than hating on Muggleborns. Even if I wasn’t telling him to love these people, I wanted to point out that there were a lot more ways of looking at the world than our parents’ narrow one. And for a time, he seemed interested. Convinced, even. Sure, some of his friends were a bit questionable, but I also saw him spending time with a couple of the girls in his year, who were perhaps less pushed to have that view because they would never be the ‘man of the family’. And he was happy to visit my cousin Andromeda, who had married a Muggleborn.”

“Oh,” Remus said softly, fairly sure Sirius had mentioned her before, “so what happened?”

“They got older,” he said darkly, “we all did, and we were pressed so hard to make a choice. Regulus saw me and my friends, some of whom were Muggleborns, who were willing to put down everything to fight for their rights. When he looked the other way, he saw my parents and some of the people he had chosen as friends, urging him to carry on with them. It was definitely easier to do that… They had money and status and safety and the illusion of love, or liking him. I guess it wasn’t even an illusion… It would have been easy for even my parents to have liked Regulus if he did what they wanted. And by doing that, he wouldn’t have been like his brother, but he would have been the heir to the family’s fortune. I guess being in Slytherin meant there was much less around to challenge those stereotypes either…”

“Hm?”

“No Muggleborns were in Slytherin, not really. As far as I know, nobody in Slytherin had two Muggles for parents. And if they did, they did a very good job of hiding it. Loads of people were purebloods. There were some halfbloods, but they were generally pushed to the side a little, not quite able to be part of the élite ever. I suppose they made up the more ‘normal’ side of Slytherin, but they were all pricks.”

“So Muggleborns weren’t _allowed_ in a certain house?” Remus’s brows furrowed. “Why didn’t Dumbledore stop that? Why did he let there be a house which essentially excluded all of those people when it was _his_ school?” He supposed there were Ministry pressures on him, but by dividing those people who wanted to get rid of Muggleborns, he would certainly make them and their opinions weaker. It might have stopped people like Regulus Black doing terrible things if he was not surrounded by people telling him that they were awful.

Sirius was frowning now too. “I don’t know. Beats me. Everyone says he’s great, Dumbledore. But he’s definitely not perfect…”

Remus, who had once been so excited to meet the man his father had talked about with such excitement, even with his limited knowledge of the true Dumbledore, found himself murmuring in agreement. Maybe that was bad, but then, his father had only ever been taught by the old man, Sirius had seen a lot more.

“I ran away from home when I was sixteen,” he said in a low voice. “One night, I had a huge argument with my parents about all of it. I had been writing to friends in the summer, one of them a girl, a _Muggleborn_ girl – Lily, of course. They offered me one last chance… They said that if I cleared my act up, if I asked to be moved to the Slytherin dorms and did them proud, then they would accept me and write me back into the inheritance. If I married someone they approved of, they would give me all the glory and status back.”

“What did you tell them in reply?”

“Told them I was gay,” Sirius smiled slightly, though he looked tired as he did so. “That I would never marry or move to Slytherin, that they would have to try again on someone else because I knew where I stood and it was not with them.”

Remus let out a low whistle between his teeth and nodded. Telling a family like _that_ that he liked boys could not have gone down well, especially alongside all the other knocks.

“They told me to leave,” he explained, “and I said I would gladly. It was painful and loud and I was very ready to be out, but right before I left, I sort of looked over my shoulder and saw Regulus. He’d blended into the background for this whole thing, except when my mother dragged his name out to compare him to me. But I wanted one last shot. I offered to let him come with me. I said he didn’t have to like my Gryffindor friends or join in with us immediately, but he could come with me and would have a chance. Staying with them, I told him, was a death sentence.”

“What did he _say?”_ Remus bit down on his lip, finding Sirius’s hand to squeeze. It was a little colder than usual, and slightly shaky.

“He wavered. I saw him waver, we all did. But then… My mother started yelling again and I think it scared him and fear seemed to win out of all of us. He shook his head, making some kind of excuse about being too young. I didn’t see him until I was back at Hogwarts. And then, he had changed. I think he tried to take on the burden of being the head of the next generation, because he drifted away from the other people he was friends with and meshed himself in a crowd of people who were a lot more like my mother and father. I could only really watch as I saw him on the edge of more and more sinister things. And then, of course, this war came on,” he said. A look of greyness fell on his face, like a shadow, but with something deeper to it, as though it was an emotion which ran through to his very core. “And then leaving Hogwarts… It started to be that he didn’t even have the protection of the school, which stopped too much from happening just because it had its own rules. Now he had to choose his own path, and he stepped on one which was utterly stupid because it kept him safe from things. Ended up surrounded by those idiots again, except this time, he could hex people without the risk of a detention. And of course, there was Bellatrix…”

“Your other cousin? From that day in Diagon Alley?”

“She’s the worst of them all, crazy and evil. And she seemed to scoop him up like a pet dog, from what I’ve heard… Keep him under her arm and in her control. Then there wasn’t really any chance for him to have second thoughts, poor sod.”

Remus was unsure whether to feel sorry for Regulus. Sirius had been able to resist his parents’ mania, so why shouldn’t he have been able to? However, he knew how it felt to be in a position of fear, where it was too dangerous really to resist and sometimes you had to keep your head down a little in order to keep your _life._ It was a difficult one, though, that was for sure. He certainly could not imagine how it was for Sirius, who was this boy’s _brother._

“Last I knew,” Sirius said stiffly, his voice somewhat flat, “she was helping him to get signed up with Voldemort and his regime and he wasn’t doing anything to stop it.”

“Did you hear that from Peter?”

Sirius shook his head. “Didn’t ask him about Regulus, actually. I had other things to say and I don’t think he would have told the truth anyway. He was feeding Voldemort information at a rate which suited him… I’m not sure he’s even supporting that cause so much as doing absolutely anything to make sure he stays alive.”

The pureblood seemed to droop a little at that, as though realising how lost that cause was. Weirdly, it was nice for once for Remus to be the one comforting him. Rather tentatively, he lowered his legs so that his feet were actually touching the floor, and pulled Sirius to sit on his lap.

“Re- If you’re not comfortable, we can-”

“Just protect my feet, yeah?” He said quietly, “I’ll be fine. I’m adjusting.”

He _was_ adjusting. The window still weirded him out, but he could at least be in the room with it. And Sirius seemed to follow his request of protection, for he wound his arms around Remus’s neck (gently) and shifted into his lap comfortably. It had been _so long_ since Remus had been this close to anyone in this way, but as he lowered his head to rest it against Sirius’s, it felt wonderful. Sirius seemed to be thinking the same thing, because he let out a soft sigh and closed his eyes.

“I missed this.”

Remus wasn’t sure they had ever done this yet, but he missed the fact they’d not been able to do it for a whole _month._

“I missed you,” he mumbled, the words so quiet they could barely be heard, “a lot.”

Sirius said nothing, but he felt a pair of lips against the good side of his neck, brushing against the skin, teasing a little.

“And that…”

“ ‘Course you did,” Sirius muttered, “I missed you loads…”

Remus wondered if he had ever been missed before – he probably hadn’t, but it was so nice to know somebody cared quite so much.

“I’m here now…” He tilted his neck, hoping to expose a little more of the skin to Sirius. “Not going back…”

And he wouldn’t, he never would. He only would have if Greyback threatened his loved ones, but he would make _sure_ that never, ever happened to him again.

“Not now, Remus…” He kissed the skin, but did not bite down, “you’re meant to be recovering. What if Madam Pomfrey has to come again and sees that you’re covered in marks from me.”

Remus let out a little snort of laughter that he did not think himself capable of. She’d seen worse than that, but it would be embarrassing… Mainly for Sirius. He wound his arms around the man’s waist and squeezed.

“I won’t let him get you, I promise.”

“Who?”

“Greyback, who else?”

Sirius’s smile softened slightly and he nodded, the expression of a man who did not see Fenrir Greyback as his most direct and immediate threat but was fully aware that Remus _did._

“Thank you… I’m not letting him get you either, Remus. You’re meant to wear slippers and eat ice cream until you’re well enough to help out with the Order again, or go to that job interview.”

Remus had _completely_ forgotten about the job interview. Though he had spent long and cold lonely nights remembering that date he had been on with Sirius, he had failed to remember the fact his boyfriend had offered to help him find employment with the man in the bookshop who had known his grandfather. And though so much had changed for _him_ recently, this was a clear sign that the world had barely moved on. A month had passed, yes, but things were more or less the same for those outside this crazy world he seemed to exist in.

“They’ll probably have found someone else by now,” he said evenly, “it’s been a while.”

“Still worth a shot,” his boyfriend shrugged, shifting about on Remus’s lap like he could not stay still for longer than a minute without risking exploding or something. “ _I’d_ hire you.”

He chuckled, feeling entire pounds lighter than he had done for such a long time. “You don’t have to _hire_ me to be your boyfriend, Sirius. I do it for free, luckily for you. I still feel like it’s all a big trick.”

It had felt like that a bit with Ezra, the feeling of delight at the situation he was in, but it was even more pronounced when it came to Sirius. He wasn’t sure how he had become so lucky, but it was nice to ride that high whilst he could. Pressing his lips into Sirius’s hair – which smelt _wonderful –_ he hid just how wide his smile was.

“I’m definitely serious. I’m _Sirius.”_ He grinned wickedly, though his terrible humour only earnt him an eye roll from Remus, who was less than impressed by his poor attempt at humour.

It didn’t seem to matter, though. Sirius could have been making the worst jokes in the world and Remus would still be holding him in his arms, utterly _glowing_ with delight at where he was lucky enough to be. It was the distance from Sirius which helped him realise just how he felt about him.

Though it still seemed like some strange and wonderful dream, he was _back._ He was _back_ and falling steadily.


End file.
